The Brussels Monitor is a satirical newspaper of record for Brussels, Belgium, and the wider Belgian-speaking world. It was founded, according to its own masthead, in 1847, which is almost certainly not true but which we feel gives the publication a certain gravitas. It is published, in principle, daily, and in practice, when there is something funny to say.
Everything published in The Brussels Monitor is fabricated. None of it is real news. No event described has happened. No quote was uttered by the person to whom it is attributed. No institution, treaty, football result, friterie, tram schedule, meteorological forecast, or mayonnaise regulation mentioned in these pages should be relied upon for any purpose, journalistic, academic, legal, navigational, culinary, or romantic.
The Brussels Monitor uses the form of a real newspaper to make jokes. We borrow the visual language of journalism (headlines, bylines, datelines, pull quotes, section labels, “Vol. CLXXIX”) because the joke works better when it looks like the thing it is making fun of. We are not attempting to deceive anyone, and every article carries a plainly worded disclaimer at the foot of the page stating that it is satire.
If you read an article here and believed it, we are flattered, but we must gently direct you to this page. If you read an article here and were offended, we are sorry, but we must gently direct you to the concept of parody.
The Brussels Monitor is committed to accuracy in its inaccuracies. If we have incorrectly attributed a fake quote to a real person, misstated a fabricated statistic, or described a fictitious event in a way that is internally inconsistent, we are happy to publish a correction. Corrections will be printed here, in the smallest font we can justify.
The Brussels Monitor does not use cookies. It does not use tracking pixels, analytics scripts, advertising networks, fingerprinting, cross-site identifiers, consent banners, or any other technology whose purpose is to follow you around the internet and note what you do. We considered installing a cookie banner and then realised we would have nothing to ask consent for, which seemed like a poor use of a banner.
The only data this website collects is what your browser sends to every website you visit: your IP address, the page you requested, the time you requested it, and the type of browser you are using. These appear in standard server logs, which are kept for a limited period for the sole purpose of keeping the server running, and are never sold, shared, or used to build a profile of you, partly because we do not know how to build a profile of you and partly because we would not want to.
IP addresses in the server logs are resolved to a country using a local GeoIP database that runs on the server. No external service is contacted. Your IP address is never sent anywhere. The country data is used solely to produce aggregate statistics on an internal dashboard that is not publicly accessible, because it is served only over a private network and protected by a certificate that browsers do not trust, which the editorial board considers a feature rather than a bug.
The dashboard shows aggregate counts: how many people visited, which pages were popular, which countries they came from, and which browsers they used. It does not track individuals, does not build profiles, does not identify visitors, and does not leave the server. The board reviews it occasionally and finds the numbers either encouraging or disappointing, depending on the day.
We do not have a newsletter. We do not have an account system. We do not have a commenting feature. There is no form on this website that asks for your name, your email, your preferences, or your thoughts, because we are a newspaper and newspapers publish their own thoughts, not yours.
If you write to editor@brusselsmonitor.invalid, your email will not arrive, because the address does not work, which is the strongest privacy guarantee we can offer.
The Brussels Monitor can be reached at the editorial floor of a building that does not exist, at an address we will not publish, by a telephone that is not plugged in. For all correspondence, please write to editor@brusselsmonitor.invalid, an email address that does not work, which we feel is appropriate.
If you are a real journalist seeking comment on a real story, we cannot help you, and we worry about you.
The Brussels Monitor is a parody. It is not affiliated with any real publication, institution, government, football association, friterie, or mayonnaise manufacturer. All names of real persons are used for satirical purposes only. No facts were harmed in the making of this newspaper.