Why can't I get syslog to log to a different directory?

Issue

• We have two local values in /etc/syslog.conf

  # Application logging  
  local5.\*          /logs/application  
  local6.\*          /logs/rt-application
  

• but all the system logging messages are going to /var/log/messages instead of /logs/\* as stated in /etc/syslog.conf