Most people, if you dig down deep, go to the supermarket for tabloids, and not just the glossy celebrity magazines that have multiplied like gremlins in the last ten years. I mean real, honest-to-badness tabloids, the newspapers for which truth and responsibility and even reality are other people's hang-ups.
And now, the world is poorer, thanks to the news this week that American Media will cease publication of one of the great pieces of trash this country has ever produced: the Weekly World News. (Read more about it here and here.)
Published since 1979, the WWN has staunchly refused, for the most part, to tell us about Lindsay or Paris or Britney, instead opting for stories about aliens, Satan, giant pigs rampaging through the Georgia woods, Nostradamus-like prophets, time travel, and, of course, Bat Boy. In an increasingly frightening world, the Weekly World News provided regular -- you might even say weekly -- respite in the form of pedal-to-the-metal stupidity. It's too bad that WWN didn't break the story of its own demise, because then we would know that it wasn't true.
[Ben Greenman's acclaimed new book of fiction, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, is now available. Order it here.]
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 12)
1. My two favorites of all time were "Dolphin Born with Human Arms" and "Farmer Finds 6 Ft. Grasshopper in Field". My Nana, god bless her soul, used to give us mason jars full of nickels she had saved up and make us kids go to the corner store to buy her the weekly world news (which she totally believed was real, especially the catholic stories) and lottery tickets. i still can't believe the cashiers used to sell us lottery tickets when we were 8, 9 10 years old.
grandma watcher at 11:10AM on Jul 24th 2007
2. My favorite one was the cover that said "Bush wins election". It was in 2000.
Alex Hamilton at 12:51PM on Jul 24th 2007
3. SO what's going to happen to Bay Boy now?? I read that he had enlisted in the Marines to fight in Iraq. Did he ever go??
Jay Radofrd at 2:08PM on Jul 24th 2007
4. I still remember back in '92 when "Space Alien Meets Ross Perot" was followed a week later by "Space Alien Backs Bill Clinton."
My favorite is still,
"Man Cuts Off His Own Head With Chainsaw, and Lives!"
Charlie at 2:13PM on Jul 24th 2007
5. My favorite was "Satan lives in my Microwave". Tried to go back to the store to buy it but they had switched out the issues. Bummer.
Bkseller12 at 2:13PM on Jul 24th 2007
6. My playwright friend will be unconsolable. He references the Weekly World News in all of his plays. He even has a short piece, Sweet Jesus, where a reporter from the Weekly World News is a character. The world is a less interesting place...
JeannieRae333 at 8:53PM on Jul 25th 2007
7. I cannot believe it's folding! I don't think I've read more than half a dozen issues in my life, but it was some of the best creative writing out there.
I put it in the same league as monthly romance and western serials - trivial, frivolous, and entirely necessary escapism.
I do hope the WWN does NOT rest in peace and will, like Bat Boy, rise again.
tara at 2:19PM on Jul 24th 2007
8. I started reading when the headline was "John Lennon's parrot cuts new Beatles' record" I was hooked ever since. Who do I write to to stop this tragedy?
diana at 2:17PM on Jul 24th 2007
9. REMEMBER WORLDS FATTEST WOMEN SITS ON WORLDS FLATEST CAT!! AND THE CAT WAS STILL ALIVE!!!
SARA at 2:17PM on Jul 24th 2007
10. This is a sad day in hell. Where else can you get the real scoop on what's going on? Where, I ask, where?
kgray at 2:55PM on Jul 24th 2007
11. You people all need a life!!!
Brynn at 2:18PM on Jul 24th 2007
12. My Uncle and his late wife posed for several editions for wwn. The stories were always concocted way out there farces but as always entertaining to read. I must admit I will miss this trashy trash!We have some great pics of this memory and wil aaaaaaa..........cherish them forever.
Jim at 2:18PM on Jul 24th 2007
13. My favorite cover was the one about Poodle Boy.
R.I.P. Weekly World News.
Hayley at 2:20PM on Jul 24th 2007
14. I started reading when the headline was "John Lennon's parrot cuts new Beatles' record" I was hooked ever since. Who do I write to to
stop this tragedy?
diana at 2:24PM on Jul 24th 2007
15. How could this happen?
kgray at 9:17AM on Jul 25th 2007