The Gadfly was a satirical weekly published in Ravna Skrad from 1948 until the Media Licensing Authority closed it in 1963. It is regarded as the forerunner of the Early Bird Chronicle, the satirical paper founded in 1975.
History
The Gadfly was founded by a circle of journalists, cartoonists and printers who had worked on the provincial press, and it built a small but durable readership in the districts for its mockery of the Revolutionary People’s Party machine and the Chancellory’s “Moral Guidance” codes. Its print runs were frequently seized, and its editors were fined under the Media Licensing Act.
The paper’s best-remembered campaign was against the Authority’s yellow ban of 1956–1961, when the colour was declared aesthetically counter-revolutionary. The Gadfly’s letters page and its weather-map cartoons made the rule a national joke, and the Authority closed the paper in 1963 after a caricature of a Diviner. Its founders later contributed to the Early Bird Chronicle, which reprinted parts of the Gadfly archive in its early years.