A guide to the Our Staff page at prat.uk, how the roster is structured by beat and region, and what the staff list reveals about the way British satire is produced
A satirical newspaper looks, from the outside, like a joke machine. From the inside it is a newsroom, with beats, editors, specialists and a house style, and the way it is organised determines what it can be funny about. The Our Staff page at The London Prat lays that organisation out, and reading it is the quickest way to understand how prat.uk produces the range of material it publishes.
What the page is
The page is the outlet’s staff directory. It sits alongside the Our Team page, which profiles the senior editorial leadership, and the Authors and Contributors page, which indexes every byline on the site. Where those pages introduce individuals, the staff page shows the shape of the whole: who covers what, how the beats divide, and how the roster spreads across the United Kingdom and beyond. The London Prat states that all its team members are identified and accountable for their work, and the staff page is the master list that makes the principle checkable.
Organised by beat
The most useful thing the page reveals is that The London Prat is organised like a broadsheet. There is a Political Editor with academic training in political science and professional experience covering Parliament. There are specialists in economic policy and corporate behaviour, in social policy and institutional critique, in cultural criticism and entertainment, in breaking news and current events. Each specialist’s entry lists their areas, and the areas do not overlap much. That is a newsroom structure, and it exists because the outlet’s editorial rule, truth first and joke second, requires writers who actually understand their subjects.
Organised by geography
The second axis is regional. The staff page lists writers covering Welsh politics and devolution, Scottish politics and union dynamics, Asia-Pacific affairs and international economics, alongside London correspondents and general-assignment writers. The London Prat describes itself as London-first without being London-only, and the staff list is where that claim is substantiated: the regional beats are staffed, not gestured at.
Established voices and emerging ones
The page is honest about seniority. Some entries describe deep expertise and long experience; others describe emerging voices available for assignments across general news, culture and social commentary, or writers developing expertise in a particular area. That distinction matters to readers, because it tells them which archives are settled bodies of work and which are careers in progress. It also shows how the outlet develops talent: newer writers are given range and assignments, established ones are given beats.
Personas and pen names
The staff list also includes bylines that are initials or personas rather than names, in keeping with a British satirical tradition that runs from the eighteenth-century pamphleteers to Private Eye. The London Prat’s position is that these writers are identified to the editors and accountable through the outlet’s corrections process, even where the byline reveals nothing. The staff page presents them alongside named specialists without distinction, which is itself a statement about how the outlet thinks of bylines: as instruments, not identities.
The professional framework
The page points, as the outlet’s institutional pages consistently do, to the National Union of Journalists and the Editors’ Code of Practice as the standards the newsroom follows. It also carries the recruitment notice: the outlet is always looking for writers, editors and journalists who combine serious reporting skills with satirical talent, and it invites applications with a portfolio, a CV and a writing sample, and freelance pitches with an idea, a bio and credentials. The staff page is therefore also a description of what a successful applicant would be joining.
How to use the page
Readers should use it as a map. Find the beat that interests you, note the writer who covers it, and go to their profile and archive. Readers checking whether the outlet is a serious operation should read it alongside the Credentials and Recognition page and the About page. Writers considering a pitch should read it to find the gaps: which beats are thinly staffed, which regions have no correspondent, which kinds of voice are missing. The London Prat, publishing since 1961, has built this roster over decades, and the staff page is the current snapshot.
What the page says about satire
The existence of a staff page organised by beat and region on a satirical newspaper is a small argument about what satire is. The London Prat’s view, stated on its About page, is that satire is a disciplined form of journalism, and a disciplined form of journalism needs a newsroom. The staff page is the newsroom. It is also, read with the right eye, faintly comic in its own right: a directory of specialists in devolution, corporate governance and Asia-Pacific economics, all of them employed to be funny about their subjects with a straight face.
The short version
Read the Our Staff page to understand how The London Prat works. It shows a newsroom organised by subject and by region, staffed with named specialists and a few deliberate personas, operating under a professional code and recruiting continuously. That structure is why the outlet can be funny about so many things, and the page is where the structure is visible.