When I worked for the local rag, we got a new General Manager who decided that the newspaper needed a new slogan.

General Managers tend to be people who have a high opinion of themselves. They don’t lack self confidence.

“Simply Parochial – that would be a great tagline for us,” came his suggestion during the initial brainstorming session. The journalists in the room rolled their eyes (behind their eyelids) and remained silent. I could sense the hatred oozing from their bitter hearts.

To many journalists, marketing and branding exists on the dark side of the business, and the General Manager – an ad man – was proof of the gloom.  

“Being parochial isn’t a good thing though,” someone managed to impress upon our dear leader as the meeting drew to an end.

“If you can mock it up with the new logo Anthony, we can discuss it at our next meeting.” The decision had been made. 

I’d been in newspapers too long by then to get upset, but when I met him in the corridor later in the day I took him aside and politely told him what I thought. 

“Being called parochial is an insult to people who live in small towns. It’s not something we can really use. I’m not a hundred percent sure…but we might need to check a dictionary,” I suggested without displaying any kind of surety. I knew I was walking a tightrope with this unsolicited opinion. Say too much and he would take it as an insult. Don’t say enough and the Manawatu Standard could end up with one of the world’s most laughable taglines.

He looked at me with one of those gazes…the one where there is no focus in the eyes. He was staring right at me and beyond me at the same time.

“But it means Provincial. And we are provincial. Palmerston North is a provincial town.”

It must have been lunchtime…or beer o’clock. Or both.

I figure he went away and quietly found a dictionary because the idea sank without trace. We stuck with the tagline we’d come up with a couple of years earlier.

Your News. Your Views. Your Day.

And the world quietly continued to spin.

***

If you look up “parochial” in your computer’s thesaurus, or even your old tree-based thesaurus, you will see that it can be swapped out with “provincial” or “small-town”.

But it can also be used interchangeably with: narrow-minded, small-minded, insular, narrow, inward-looking, limited, restricted, conventional, short-sighted, petty, close-minded, blinkered, myopic.

 ***

All this is very haha. I hope you had a chuckle.

What a buffoon that guy was. 

It was an atrocious tagline, but deep down I – and I assume the journos in the room – were laughing at the guy. Yeah…he was showing all the signs of being a meathead…but we also knew that we were superior beings. You see…he came from Wanganui*…an even smaller town than ours!

 ***

So…what’s all this about then? Why would a small-town book publisher (Firestarter) be reminiscing on the good old days of regional newspapers?

Well…while we won’t be using the term “Simply Parochial” as a tagline any time soon, we’ve decided to embrace much of the concept. While we’re being anything but conventional by being happy with our narrow, restricted and somewhat inward looking focus we’re happy with that decision – for now.

While we’d obviously be pleased to come up with a worldwide, or even nationwide bestseller, there are a whole lot of reasons why we’re going to sit back and do what we do best. Make Manawatū Lit. Sell Manawatū Lit. Encourage Manawatū Lit.

This is the first of what will hopefully be regular posts about our myopic adventures in Publishingland. Keep a blinkered eye out on this website and on our Facebook and Insta feeds for more.

* Wanganui then, Whanganui now.