Saint found in cereal? Makes a nice change from the IMF

August marks the start of silly season, when real news is in short supply and anything goes – even on the front page

AUGUST IS a season of its own in the media. It is a time of frivolity on news pages, which include stories that otherwise would not make it into print. The Germans call it Sommeroch; the French prefer la morte-saison. Welcome to the silly season. In England, it used to be known as cucumber time because, once the cucumbers were in season, the gentry would leave town for their country estates and the tailors noticed a drop in business.

Apparently the term "silly season" was invented by a writer at the Saturday Reviewin the 1860s to denote the slow news cycle of the summer months when the parliamentary forums and law courts took a break, leaving reporters to scramble for stories before their news conferences each day.

It still happens today as the Dáil and most of the courts are closed until the autumn. This means that there are few spin-off stories for parliamentary and legal correspondents to chase up, except perhaps those about what holidays the politicians are taking, where they are going, how much it will cost and who is left in charge.

Something has to fill the vacuum and usually it is a bevy of silly-season stories.

In July 2009, for example, a supposed image of the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree stump in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, resulted in a week’s worth of headlines. Newspapers are still waiting for something similar to come along, but no doubt it will.

The tabloid press print some outrageous and unbelievable stories, as explained in ex- National Enquirerreporter Bill Sloan's book on the cultural impact of American tabloids, I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby.

Tabloids excel in August because anything goes, and stories on such topics as the world's oldest donkey seem to run almost annually in the Daily Mail.

One of the most memorable of these is the Sun'sinfamous front-page story "Victor Meldrew Found in Space" in August 2005. By found in space, the newspaper meant that if you could join up some stars as you would with dots, you could conjure up a crude image of the actor. Of course, you could create a picture of almost anything by joining up stars in the sky, but that doesn't matter.

There is a benign, almost antiquated, innocence to these stories, such as the one about the giant pet toad that featured in the Evening Heraldon Thursday with an aside about whether it might be the largest in Ireland, or stories about crop circles, or invasions of killer bees, ants and jellyfish.

Gardaí and crime reporters used to say that criminals took an unofficial sabbatical from their gangland feuds in the summer – ridiculous as that may seem. Now, however, that does not happen.

The silly season is changing, both through circumstance and how information is sourced. There has already been plenty of drama this year, here and abroad. Local and global economic turmoil has dominated the media for nearly three years, and its governance of the news agenda means that the scrapbook of silly-season stories that newspapers reach for on a slow news day is thinning.

At the same time, the silly season has evolved – or perhaps regressed – since the internet began to dominate news and information. Online, every day is silly season. You can get your fill of celebrity scandal any time. Religious figures, who have appeared on everything from toast to irons and frying pans, have their own Facebook groups.

There are probably hundreds of videos of animals doing ridiculous things and more are added each hour. This week’s favourite is a beluga whale in an aquarium seemingly dancing to a mariachi band.

Endless conspiracy theories can be strenuously firmed up or mercilessly debunked depending on what you want to believe. The Montauk Monster, which was found on a beach in New York in July 2008, turned out to be a decomposing raccoon. The “alien life forms” found in a sewer in North Carolina in July 2009 were large worm colonies.

Photos of such mysterious creatures now dominate the silly season, with news organisations grabbing online hits and replicating them in print or on television.

The internet has responded with memes – concepts that spread over the web – and trending topics that are much harder to explain in silly-season newspaper terms because they are usually layered in irony and in-jokes, making them impossible to narrate to a reader or a viewer who isn’t already aware of the back story.

It takes just a few hours to dig out such silly stories and put them online, whereas it can take days to get them into a newspaper. People don’t need light relief in newspapers or on news broadcasts anymore, because their inboxes and Twitter feeds are full of it.

This year, many people might welcome a silly season however. There’s been almost too much news, especially of the doomsday economic kind. In previous years, consumers were almost irritated by the silly-season reports.

Now, we would probably be grateful to have nothing more to worry about than dodgy alien stories or a saint turning up in our cereal. But the silly season is getting shorter.

Curriculum vitae

What is it?The usually slow news days throughout August.

Why is it in the news?In case you haven't noticed, it's August.

Most appealing characteristicsLight-hearted, frivolous and pleasantly distracting.

Least appealing characteristicsInane, thinly researched and speculative.

Most likely to say"Innocent bathers warned about potential seal attacks"

Least likely to say"Killer bees don't exist."