The Prism
| Categories | Satirical news magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Total circulation (2020) | 1 million |
| Year founded | 1959 |
| Company | Sphekes SàRL |
| Country |  Gylias |
| Based in | Kalyta, Nauras |
| Language | |
| Website | http://www.prism.gls/ |
The Prism (French reformed: L'Prisme) is a Gylian satirical news magazine, founded in 1959. It is famous for its lampooning of public figures and investigative journalism.
History
The Prism was founded in 1959, by the staff of a former humour periodical in the Free Territories that had been shut down.
It quickly established itself as Gylias' leading satirical magazine during the Golden Revolution, and hit its circulation peak during the wretched decade. It remains a renowned satire magazine and talent factory, associated with some of Gylias' best-known comedic voices.
During the 1990s, it switched to digital printing and embraced the internet in Gylias — digitising its archives through BiblioNet and beginning to publish exclusive features on its website.
Ownership and organisation
The Prism is owned and published by Sphekes, legally constituted as an SàRL. Its headquarters are in Kalyta, Nauras.
The magazine has a 5-member Management Board and a 10-member Supervisory Board, elected yearly.
The magazine's revenue comes from newsagent's sales, paid subscriptions, online orders, and donations. Donors are listed at the end of each issue. It does not accept advertising.
Content and style
The Prism has a fixed format, with half the magazine being allocated to satire and humour, and the other half to investigative journalism that focuses on corruption, incompetence, and malfeasance among public servants and important individuals.
Its masthead text, "Organ of the Farces of Refraction", parodies a famous phrase once uttered by communist leader Adélaïde Raynault, condemning "the forces of reaction".
Recurring topics include collections of humorous typos and malapropisms found in the Gylian media, collections of gaffes and absurd statements by public servants and politicians, comical imaginary interviews with and diaries by well-known public figures, and parodies of the incumbent Prime Ministers and Presidents. It has also featured several regular comic strips.
The magazine is famous for its copious puns and in-jokes, often only comprehensible to regular readers. It has invented numerous nicknames for politicians and other public figures. It frequently writes English and French phonetically using the Gylic alphabet.
Its political sympathies are strongly anarchist and leftist.
Impact
The Prism is Gylias' most successful satirical magazine, and has had an influence on pop culture.
Marie-Hélène Arnaud once praised the magazine as "a great contributor to breathing new life into the far-left of this country", noting its indictments of false consciousness, attacks on hierarchies, and firm opposition to capitalism.
Radix describes the magazine's tone as "oscillating between Horatian and Juvenalian satire depending on issue and target", and characterises it as "having an undoubted soft spot for larger-than-life figures", exemplified by its mischievously admiring parodies of Julie Legrand, Birgit Eckstein, Moana Pozzi, and the Tetramazones, among others.