The Framley Examiner is an online
newspaper launched in 2001 devoted to spoofing British local newspapers. Sometimes described as a British Onion, the two publications have quite different approaches. Whereas The Onion uses the vehicle of news reporting to comment on political events, The Framley Examiner spoofs the news media themselves.
Supposedly concerning itself with reporting news from the fictitious town of Framley and its local boroughs including Whoft, Fracton and St Eyot, The Framley Examiner contains lashing of Stylistic Suck (badly formatted and proof-checked text, for example) and strange surrealistic small ads. Two books have been written based on the website; 'The Framley Examiner' and 'Historical Framley'.
The Framley Examiner contains the following tropes
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Every single inhabitant of Framley and every correspondent on the paper (with the possible exception of Damium Clavalier).
- Crapsack World: The district of Batley, home to one of Framley's most deprived estates. Every single home there is invaded every single night. On the plus side, all of the prostitutes are fully trained plumbers.
- Dog Got Sent to a Farm: Parodied in an advert for Doolittle's pet placements:"We'll take the corpse of your pet and give it to a loving farm family. We have hundreds of rural families on our books, none of whom mind having a dead dog on the hearth rug. Now you won't be lying - both you and Rover can go to Heaven!"
- Intangible Theft: One wanted criminal is alleged to have stolen the colour purple from a rainbow.
- Saving the Orphanage: One series of articles concerns an attempt to tear down St Eyots castle and have it replaced with a theme park, and the efforts of local historians Rathbone Twiddrington and Oswald Underclown to preserve the castle (and its tearooms in particular) by claiming it as the home of Britain's first Batman.
- Severely Specialized Store: Just Rakes, an early venture by entrpreneur Roy Newby.
- Springtime for Hitler: Damium Clavlier's attempts to get fired from the paper have included writing stories in which murderers are given amnesties and sneaking pornographic pictures into the children's section. Given that his stories are no more weird than what other correspondents write, his attempts seem only to have made him more indispensable to the Framley Examiner.
- Straw Critic/Caustic Critic: The Framley Examiner's arts correspondent, Ursula Cloybeam. Her articles include a devastating and abusive attack on a local school production of Julius Caesar.
- Vague Age: Odgar Cushion (deceased), the Examiner's self-appointed chronicler of the bizarre, was born at some point between 1932 and 1994.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: "A pound coin has been fond abandoned in a phone box in Whoft."
