The silly season is the period lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. This term was known by the end of the 19th century and listed in the second edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and remains in use at the start of the 21st century. The fifteenth edition of Brewer’s expands on the second, defining the silly season as „the part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)”.
Typically, the latter half of the summer is slow in terms of newsworthy events. Newspapers as their primary means of income rely on advertisements, which rely on readers seeing them, but historically newspaper readership drops off during this time when, for instance, in the United Kingdom, Parliament takes its summer recess, so that parliamentary debates and Prime Minister’s Questions, which generate much news coverage, do not happen. Similar recesses are typical of legislative bodies elsewhere, and there is also a decline of other news because vacations are common during that period. To retain (and attract) subscribers, newspapers would print attention-grabbing headlines and articles to boost sales, often to do with minor moral panics or child abductions.
Ah, iar e perioada aia a anului…