Snowdrift Bay Gazette

Overview

The Snowdrift Bay Gazette is the town’s long-standing newspaper—stoic, slightly cramped, and stubbornly committed to accuracy. It serves as the record-keeper of both civic events and spontaneous absurdity, from mayoral press conferences to surprise ice cream-based uprisings.

The Gazette publishes:

  • Hard news

  • Op-eds that occasionally become duels

  • Cautious endorsements

  • Recaps of town meetings where someone inevitably tries to eat the minutes (once literally)

It has never missed a print day—even during the “Great Ink Possession” of 2003.

Appearance

The Gazette’s building is a two-story brick structure with ivy clinging to one side and an old rotary press in the window labeled “DO NOT TOUCH (Pierre).”

Inside:

  • Wooden desks stacked with annotated papers

  • Typewriters, laptops, and one ghost-powered dictation pad

  • Filing cabinets with drawers labeled “Mildly Suspicious” and “Goat Incidents – Recurring”

  • A single, dented coffee machine that has seen things

The walls are lined with framed front pages including such classics as:

  • “Mayor Llama Declares Tuesday to Be Fuchsia”

  • “Yeti Refuses Comment, Hurls Reporter Into Sky”

  • “Mime Awarded Journalist of the Month—Again”

Staff

  • Mr. Henderson (Editor-in-Chief):
     A stern, principled man with a legendary mustache and a red pen sharp enough to cut dreams in half. Demands excellence, despises emojis, and insists on writing “email” as “electronic correspondence.”

  • Yorn (Lead Reporter):
     The Gazette’s top journalist. Meticulous, thoughtful, and frequently tasked with covering the town’s least coverable events. His articles are known for their precision, clarity, and subtle yeti-related humor.

  • Pierre (Contributing Reporter/Mime):
     Never speaks, yet somehow turns in flawless copy. Uses mime logic to conduct interviews. Once filed a 3,000-word investigative report using only interpretive gestures and a quill. Mr. Henderson had no notes.

  • Rotating Interns:
     Most leave after one week. One stayed too long and now files weather reports from inside the wall.

Popular With…

  • Elara, who clips articles and annotates them in the margins for fun

  • Brenda, who once wrote a guest column titled “Why I’m Not in Love With Philip (I Am)”—it ran as satire

  • Mayor Llama, who submits letters to the editor daily. Most are published under the category “Civic Puzzles”

  • The Old Lady, who insists her rants be printed verbatim, complete with handbag punctuation

Notable Lore & Moments

  • The Typo That Sparked a Festival:
     A headline once read “Scone Festival Declared Sacred Rite.” The town embraced it. Now it’s annual. Yorn sighs about it every year.

  • The Mime-Initiated Editorial Coup:
     Pierre once staged a silent newsroom takeover using nothing but a mime rope and a chalkboard. Mr. Henderson was impressed and gave him a raise.

  • The Haunted Op-Ed Page:
     One page of the layout software is sentient. It refuses poor arguments and once corrected a mayoral candidate’s syntax mid-sentence.

Quirks and Secrets

  • There’s a staff rule: if three typewriters clack in unison, you go home

  • The office plants only grow toward the most accurate reporter

  • The style guide includes sections on “Possessive Apostrophes” and “How to Address Beings from Beyond”

  • There is an archive room no one has entered since 1997—yet fresh papers appear in it weekly

  • Every editor-in-chief leaves behind a mug that cannot be lifted by the next one until their edits are honored