Review: The St Austell Voice “Newspaper”

If you're in St Austell, walking through Fore Street and you feel a bit down because everyone looks so sad-keeping-a-brave-face then don’t worry. Simply stroll down West Hill to the open plan offices of St Austell Voice and the glumness of the dudes in there will really cheer you up. The staff of the St Austell Voice make a Russian heroin clinic look like the opening of the Sydney Olympics.

Here they are at the launch of the paper in May 2006:









Here they are today, a few months after publication:






Key facts about the St Austell Voice:

• It is a very bad newspaper.
• It tries to sensationalize things about St Austell when we all know that there is nothing sensational about it at the moment.
  
• The St Austell Voice sells for 40 new pence, which is, as the paper proudly boasts “less than half the price of its 85p rival Cornish Guardian”. They are correct in their calculations, but they overlook the fact that the Cornish Guardian is more than twice as good - In fact, current analytics rank the Cornish Guardian as being over twelve thousand times better than the St Austell Voice.
  

If you are in the doctors and the queue is 3 hours long and you have read that copy of Good Housekeeping from 1988 and someone else is still reading the NHS pamphlet on penicillin allergies then maybe, just maybe, you could have a read of the St Austell Voice. But under any other circumstances do not read this paper. Ever.


C K Chesterton