Weekly World News to Cease Publication Next Month

image source: Wikipedia

The Weekly World News shunned the usual tabloid fare of celebrity gossip. Instead, it focused upon the weird, the bizarre, the fake. Although somebody somewhere believed its accounts of the Batboy, half-human, half-bat, found in a cave as an infant, or of the presence of aliens in the Clinton-era congress, it was clearly not intended to be taken seriously. Hipsters would pass copies around at parties and solemnly declare how the WWN was an important beta-tester of every new version of Adobe Photoshop.

American Media's reasons for closing down the paper are not clear. Some people point to declining circulation; others cite AMI's more general financial difficulties. But as Paul Krassner famously said about his satire zine The Realist, it's tough to come up with plausible satire in a world where Spiro Agnew regularly makes the headlines; and it is especially tough to publish a paper full of preposterous news when anyone with an appetite for falsehood simply need to tune to Fox News or read Matt Drudge on the Web.

(via Scott McLemee at Crooked Timber)