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A Moment of Silence, Please

By drorzel on July 25, 2007.

The Weekly World News is shutting down its print operation at the end of August, though the web site will continue to be active. Long lines in the supermarket will be that much duller.

Actually, a moment of silence is probably the wrong tribute. Maybe a moment of screeching like a bat child found in a cave, instead?

(True WWN anecdote: A friend of mine in college applied for a job with the Weekly World News after graduation. Sadly, he didn't get a rejection letter written by Bigfoot, or anything. I'm not sure they responded at all, actually...)

(He was an art major, who did a woodblock print based on the famous "Bat Boy" picture as part of his senior show, and even sold a few copies at $50 a pop. I've got one of his prints, titled "Death at the Monster Truck Rally," hanging in my room at my parents' house, but sadly, he hasn't become famous, at least not that I've noticed...)

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I heard this on NPR this morning, and it made me sad. I've actually bought the occasional issue, as they're almost always good for a laugh or two. In the age of citizen-crackpot journalism and cheap photo-editing tools, though, I don't see how they can remain competitive. Ah, well.

That *is* sad. It was my favorite checkout reading. Best headline ever? "Baby Born With David Niven Mustache". Though the picture of Bat Boy attacking Saddam was pretty good too.

What a pity. Now where will the Men in Black get their intelligence?

As for the art, I think the artist needs to die young and gruesome. Or is that just for music?

I have always wondered why the reading material on sale at checkout counters is so atrocius. Even if it is just for entertainment they could have the onion or something, but all of these Paparazzi rags and wacko things like WWN and the NE, etc. I never see anyone buy them either.

Well, shoot, I said to myself when I heard this on NPR, for what publication shall Ed Anger write now????

These newspapers, the top one of which in the USA sold some years ago for $4 x 10^8, actually have fact-checkers on staff. Their job, I heard from the CEO, was to ensure that no reasonable person could believe that stories (i.e. about celebrities with itchy attorneys) could believe were factual.

That ties in, via some parity-violating antimatter transformation, to the other thread recently about Journalism, where I quoted Shakespeare...

Aw man, the world is losing its only reliable newspaper!

Despite the timeless appeal of Bat Boy, my favorite issue was when the face of Satan appeared in a cloud over the White House...sometime in the late '90s.