The Equestrian Press · 11:18pm May 31st, 2014
Okay one more post about Breaking News and Weather then I'll shut up about it and get back to blogging about ponies and science...
I love newspapers. I probably waste as much time tracking random news stories as I do reading fan fiction. And while the internet is great in letting us connect with distant news outlets, there is still something satisfying about perusing printed media. I'm the sort of nerd who when visiting a new city, will buy the local papers just to see the sort of stories they cover, and what typeface they use.
Ponyville Confidential is one of my favourite episodes. We only get the details of the Foal Free Press, but the story suggests there are many other newspapers in Equestria. Not surprising given the plethora of pony paparazzi out there. And given the lack of other media outlets – no radio, TV, or internet – the Equestrian Press must have a big influence on pony society.
What are the newspapers in Equestria like? This was one of things I wanted to explore in this story. Following the usual method of using the pony world to parody our own, I picked four papers as loose models, and went from there. As a citizen of the internet, my choice of reading matter takes no consideration of national boundaries. Hence I took inspiration from papers across four countries, with the result that I have either created something of relevance to readers of all nationalities... Or something which is mutually incomprehensible to all. I hope it's closer to the former, which given the universal nature of many news stories, seems more likely.
For the record, this was my inspiration for the various papers:
I always feel that Cloudsdale has a certain Italian side to it – the classical architecture, the Greco-Roman pegasus roots, and the style-conscious sunglasses-wearing characters like Spitfire and Rainbow Dash. So for the Cloudsdale Courier my model was the Milanese paper Corriere della Sera. And the garbage-crisis story was inspired by a perennial news story in Naples.
For Manehattan, the choice of model was obvious: The New York Times. The style of this paper – lovely long articles full of background information – was ideal to give my version of the sonic rainboom legend.
The Daily Mare was based on the Daily Mail, the tabloid which British liberals love to hate. The Zebrican immigrants headline based on the Mail's many stories on Romanian immigration over the last year, but it applies equally well to similar reports in the right wing press worldwide.
The Canterlot Quack is in some ways the most interesting. I wanted to create a Canterlot version of a Paris newspaper, as a Parisian attitude seemed appropriate for the unicorn elite. But none of the obvious choices seemed distinctive enough. I then remembered Le Canard, and thought 'why not?'
Le Canard enchaîné ('the chained-up duck') is almost unheard of outside France and has no real internet presence. Inside France, it has a circulation of over 400,000 and is visible at nearly all newsstands – distinctively printed in black white and red, with no advertisements or photographs – just comics. As I don't understand nearly enough about the intricacies of French politics and society to do a proper parody, my version was my own invention, using the layout of Le Canard, and a mix of crazy story ideas, with some inspiration from The Onion, Private Eye, and The Quibbler. As no two satirical newspapers are the same, this seems fair enough.
This project was also inspired by this buzzfeed: How The Media Will Report The Apocalypse. Rather better than mine - but not as cute.
I love this idea.
Like seriously.
If I had more free time, I'd do the same for my own stories, but alas, I suck at PowerPoint, so what do I know.
I read the the Canterlot Quack as being more along the lines of the Weekly World News than the Onion, fwiw.