People ask us how we do it. Not often, and not always with admiration — sometimes the question is more along the lines of "how on earth did you think that was acceptable" — but the question of how satirical journalism is actually written, mechanically, from the blank page to the published piece, comes up with sufficient regularity that a guide seems warranted.
This is that guide. It is practical. It contains specific instructions. It will not tell you that satire is a gift you either have or you don't, because that is both false and deeply unhelpful. Satire is a craft. Crafts are learnable. Some people learn them faster than others, and some people have a natural aptitude, but the mechanics are reproducible and the principles are teachable. You are reading this. You can write satire. Whether you can write satire well is a separate question, and one that will be addressed only obliquely here because the honest answer is "not yet, but possibly."
Every piece of satirical journalism has a target. This is not optional. Satire without a target is not satire — it is whimsy, which is fine for certain purposes but is not what we are making here. The target is the specific real-world subject whose absurdity, hypocrisy, incompetence, or self-importance you are going to illuminate through the application of mockery.
Targets come in several categories. The most common are: individuals (politicians, executives, celebrities, public intellectuals who take themselves too seriously), institutions (government departments, regulatory bodies, corporate entities, the BBC in its capacity as a publicly-funded institution that nonetheless cannot find a way to be on time for anything), and social phenomena (cultural trends, moral panics, the inexplicable persistence of certain behaviours that everyone agrees are terrible whilst continuing to engage in them).
The best targets have two qualities. First, they are doing something — they have a specific, recent, observable behaviour or policy or statement that provides the hook. Abstract satire about the general awfulness of a particular type of person tends to be less sharp than satire about what that specific type of person did last Tuesday. Second, they have power. Satire directed upward at power structures serves a social function. Satire directed downward at the vulnerable, the marginalised, or the already-mocked is not satirical journalism; it is cruelty with a byline.
Once you have your target, you need the truth. Not the satirical truth — the actual truth. What is really going on? What is the real observation, stated plainly and without any attempt at comedy, that this piece is going to make?
Write it down. Seriously: write it down in a single, plain, unadorned sentence. "This government department spends significant resources monitoring its own press coverage whilst reducing the services it is nominally responsible for providing." That is the truth. It is not yet funny. It is not yet a piece of satirical journalism. It is a factual observation with satirical potential. The rest of the process is the work of making that potential actual.
This step is crucial because it keeps you honest throughout the writing process. When you have drafted a paragraph that is funny but does not quite connect to the central observation, you can check it against your original sentence. If the paragraph illuminates the truth, it stays. If it is funny but disconnected, it is the kind of paragraph you put in a file called "good stuff that doesn't belong here" and use in a different piece.
Satirical journalism is not one thing tonally. The register — the specific voice, level of formality, and emotional temperature of the piece — needs to be chosen deliberately before you start writing, because it determines everything that follows.
The main registers available to the satirical journalist are:
The earnest report. The piece is written in the neutral, professional voice of genuine journalism, presenting the absurd content as if it were straight news. This works best when the satirical target is an institution — a government department, a corporation, an official body — and the comedy comes from the gap between the journalistic voice and the content it is reporting. The more conscientiously the piece imitates wire-service journalism, the more effective this register tends to be.
The outraged commentary. The piece makes no attempt to pretend neutrality. The satirist's voice is present and furious, deploying exaggeration and invective in the tradition of Juvenal. This is less common in British satirical journalism than in, say, American political commentary, because British satirical tradition tends to value the appearance of understatement even when communicating considerable fury.
The bemused observer. The satirist presents themselves as a slightly confused but well-intentioned person trying to understand the logic of whatever is being mocked. "Help me understand" is the tone: I have been following this policy closely, and I genuinely cannot work out how it is supposed to achieve the stated objective. The comedy comes from the careful, patient analysis revealing that the stated objective is not the actual objective, or that the actual objective is terrible, or both.
The official document. The piece takes the form of an internal memo, a press release, a report, a consultation response, a terms and conditions document. The satirical target is given voice in its own idiom, and the comedy comes from what the idiom reveals about the institution producing it. This is one of the harder registers to sustain but produces some of the most memorable satirical pieces when executed well.
The opening paragraph of a satirical news article is the most important paragraph. Not because it sets up the joke — though it does — but because it determines whether the reader will continue. Satirical journalism is competing for attention in the same way all journalism does, and the lead must perform the same dual function as a straight news lead: tell the reader what the piece is about, and make them want to know more.
The satirical lead has one additional requirement: it must establish the tone. The reader needs to know, within two sentences, that they are reading satire. Not through a disclaimer — we are not attaching labels to the comedy at this stage — but through the tonal signal embedded in the writing itself. The slight excess, the telling detail, the almost-but-not-quite straight delivery. The reader should feel the genre, not be told it.
Several specific approaches work consistently well. The announcement: "The Department of Health has confirmed this week that health is, on balance, preferable to illness, following a £4.7 million study commissioned in 2018." The observation: "There are currently forty-seven parliamentary committees dedicated to the oversight of governmental transparency, and none of them have met this year." The quotation: "'We are committed to full accountability,' said a spokesman, speaking anonymously, from an undisclosed location, off the record."
Each of these establishes the satirical register in the lead itself, without explicitly flagging it as satire. The reader is in the genre immediately.
A satirical news article follows the same basic inverted pyramid structure as a genuine news piece: the most important information (or, in satire, the most important comic observation) at the top, the supporting material in the middle, the background and context at the bottom. This structure exists for reasons that apply equally to straight and satirical journalism: it allows readers to stop at any point and still have the core information; it allows editors to cut from the bottom without losing the essential material.
The middle section of a satirical piece is where the target's specific behaviours, statements, or policies are examined — exaggerated, juxtaposed, or simply quoted directly (because direct quotation often does the satirist's work without assistance). This is the evidentiary section: you are building the case. The comedy should accumulate here, each paragraph adding to the absurdity established by the lead.
The final section contextualises. In a straight news piece, this is background. In a satirical piece, it is often where the underlying truth is stated most plainly — the sincere turn, the moment where the jokes step back and the genuine observation is made directly. Not always: some satirical pieces sustain the comic register throughout and trust the reader to extract the serious point. But the most effective pieces tend to give the reader at least one moment of unobscured clarity before the end.
The ending of a satirical piece is where amateurs most often falter. Having built to their main observation and delivered it, they are uncertain whether to end on a joke, a straight statement, or something in between. The most common failure is the trailing ending: the piece continues past its natural conclusion, adding additional jokes that feel like nervous laughter rather than earned comedy, until the reader is not sure whether it is finished.
The ending should feel inevitable. Not necessarily in the sense of being predictable — surprise is still possible and often desirable — but in the sense of resolving the tension established by the piece's opening. If the lead created a specific kind of absurdity, the ending should take that absurdity to its logical conclusion. If the piece has been building an argument, the ending should deliver the argument's final, clearest statement. The last line should be the line that stays with the reader.
British satirical convention tends toward the dry understatement as a closing move: the observation so precisely calibrated to the situation that its apparent casualness is itself the joke. The reader reaches the end, pauses, and then laughs — not at the line itself, which is almost straight, but at the specific gap between the line and the reality it is describing.
Read the finished draft and look, specifically, for every sentence that could contain a pun, a double meaning, or a felicitous turn of phrase and does not. These are missed opportunities, and they accumulate. Satirical journalism that is logically precise but tonally flat — where every observation is correct and none of them are fun to read — is not finished. The wordplay is not decoration. It is part of the mechanism by which comedy creates pleasure in the reader, and pleasure is what keeps the reader reading.
This step requires a certain kind of self-consciousness that is uncomfortable in a first draft but becomes increasingly natural with practice. You are reading your own work as a slightly hostile editor who wants it to be funnier. Some of the original phrasing will be perfectly fine. Some of it will reveal, under this second reading, that you chose the clear word where the unexpected word would have worked better, or the general term where the specific term would have been more amusing.
Every satirical news article should end with a disclaimer identifying it as satirical in nature. This is not optional, not cowardly, and not a concession to readers who do not understand the form. It is a legal and ethical requirement that protects both the publication and the subjects of the piece, and it has been the standard practice of reputable satirical publications for as long as there have been reputable satirical publications to set standards.
The disclaimer should be short, honest, and — because this is satire and the tone should be sustained even in the legal small print — not entirely without personality. The boilerplate is negotiable. The function is not.
Now go and write something. The world is generously supplying material.
This article is British satirical journalism produced by The London Prat (prat.uk), established 1961. This guide constitutes practical advice, not legal instruction, and The London Prat accepts no responsibility for pieces written pursuant to its guidance that subsequently require legal advice. Consult a solicitor. Consult a good solicitor. — The Editors, The London Prat
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Further Reading at The London Prat