Satire of Distinction?

I know haven't been on exactly sparkling form this week blog-wise. I'm afraid that most of my energies over the past couple of weeks have been concentrated on completing two stories, updating the archive and trying to write a new editorial (which I'm still dragging my feet over). It isn't as if there hasn't been plenty going on in the real world for me to comment on: party conferences, Iraq, Richard Hammond the whole Labour leadership thing. But that's part of the problem - I find myself less and less interested in commenting upon such things. Now, I know that's a strange thing for a man who edits a satire site to say, but I've always tried to take the broader approach to satire, refusing to confine myself to just the usual political jibes. In truth, anybody can dash off a couple of paragraphs about Cherie Blair's latest gaffe, post it to the web and claim they're writing satire (and believe me, increasing numbers seem to be doing just that). I want to tackle the subjects and write the stories which nobody else is willing to. Indeed, writing stories is really what I'm more interested in doing now - I really don't have the time or the patience for the smart-arsed one-liners and clever punchlines any more. Again, anybody can do that sort of thing.

In the end, I suppose that's what it comes down to - distinctiveness. I'm proud of the fact that, amongst the morass of 'satire' sites floating about the web like so much flotsam and jetsum, The Sleaze remains distinctive. Not just in appearance (we're no php-script clone), but also in its style and subject matter. I remember that when I started publishing to the web, the received wisdom was that readers simply wouldn't look at stories more than a couple of short paragraphs long. I'm happy to say that we've disproved that! Not only has traffic to The Sleaze consistently grown since it was established, but visitors frequently come back for more, returning to read multiple stories. The upshot of all this is that I find that we have less and less in common with most of the other so-called 'satire' sites out there. Let's face it, I never did have much time for most of them and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Increasingly, I find myself ploughing my own furrow - and a very nice furrow it is too! Vive la difference, I say! Now, back to that bloody editorial...