A goose has started a newspaper. That goose, specifically. Preparations took several weeks, by one account, and several minutes, by another, and this correspondent has given up reconciling the two and simply reports that the thing now exists.
The case for it is short. The pond has gone unreported for too long. A coot’s grievance, a heron’s arrival, the going rate for a crust at the East Bank: these are news, and until this morning nobody at all was writing them down. This paper means to.
There has, this correspondent gathers, been a great deal of honking about the whole question in recent sessions of the reed-bed subcommittee, though what precisely was said no one will now repeat on the record. That a paper was wanted seems to have been the single point of agreement. That a paper has actually turned up is, by all early indications, the subcommittee’s problem as much as anyone’s.
Coverage will be broad. The weather. The grievances. Whatever drifts off the lily pads. The occasional opinion, firmly held and briefly defended. And, readers are warned, a frank and continuing accounting of which ducks are presently in the pond without proper authorisation, a column that promises to run long, there being more of that sort of thing about than anyone has admitted.
Publication will be daily. Daily (ish). The honesty of that small parenthesis is the whole of the editorial policy. Some mornings the reeds are wet, the mood is wrong, and there is no paper. Better to say as much plainly now than invent reasons for it later.
This correspondent asked the proprietor for a statement of intent. The proprietor waddled three paces left, considered a passing dragonfly at some length, and declined to elaborate. Pressed, the proprietor honked twice and went to preen.
The gazette takes that for a mandate. The first issue files today, on a clear morning, the reeds dry and the mood for once exactly right. The rest will follow on the days the pond allows, and only those. That is the arrangement, and the pond is welcome to enforce it.