Blackbury Guardian

The local newspaper featured in the Johnny Maxwell series is the Blackbury Guardian, one of those slightly desperate local newspapers where the staff journalists are either on the way up and hungering for the moment they get noticed by one of the big nationals, or on the way down and somewhat cynical, or like Jeremy the Thumb are hampered by a basic lack of journalistic or photographic talent, and incapable of getting any further. And all three categories of journalists are equally desperate for some proper news, maybe a major plane crash, or a terrorist outrage, or an outbreak of infectious disease. Anything to break the monotonous diet of weddings, funerals, court appearances and Super Bingo winners.

The first books of the Bromeliad series are set in the same Blackbury/Grimethorpe/Newtown conurbation, and here, the Blackbury Evening Post and Gazette is said to be the only newspaper in town.

It is possible that the Guardian is a weekly local newspaper and the Gazette is the evening daily, which would resolve an apparent continuity error. (As illustration, in South Manchester the Manchester Evening News is the daily afternoon/evening paper, while the Express Group titles, ie the Stockport Express, are the weekly local publications)

The local newspapers appear in Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb.

Annotation

Terry Pratchett makes no secret of the fact that his first job was in local newspaper reporting. He is perchance describing that which he knows only too well here...