WWN: A Eulogy

Weekly World News, the delightful harbinger of shockingly delicious, borderline unbelievable tabloid fodder, has finally decided to call it quits, leaving me dismayed, morose and lost in a world now devoid of alien babies, celebrity clones and bat-boys hiding in caves. To whom will I turn for my facts?!?

Arguably the granddaddy of shock pseudo-journalism, WWN has spent the past 28 years delivering such headlines as “Preacher Explodes During Sermon,” “Saddam and Osama’s Gay Wedding,” and “Firefighter Fired for Fighting Fire With Fire.” (Where do they come up with this stuff? If only I were so brilliant…)

Now the WWN, which boasts to be the “World’s Only Reliable Newspaper” will unplug the presses, turn out the lights and lock its doors “due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand.”

Really, it’s my own fault. It’s your fault. We all share in the blame. Let’s not lie to ourselves; we weren’t as supportive of the WWN as we could’ve been. Sure, I would peruse the pages in the checkout lines like anybody else, but I never actually bought a copy (at least I would never admit to it). I enjoyed the quirky stories about alien impregnations as much as the next guy, but naturally I questioned their veracity. And now these stories are gone forever, relegated to the tombs of briny ship captains telling tales of monstrous sea serpents and manipulative mothers ominously warning children about the boogieman so they will eat their broccoli. It’s a shame we will have to bear for the rest of our days.

Then again, maybe it’s the WWN’s fault. Maybe if the editors were more attuned to the inclinations of supermarket impulse buyers. Maybe if the fact-checkers were more on point. After all, how could the ghost of Elvis be haunting a herd of cattle in Northern Texas and the still-living Elvis simultaneously be dwelling in a cave in the Himalayas?

Maybe there’s no one to blame. Maybe it was market forces. No room for the little guy in the overcrowded magazine industry. Maybe we’ve become too jaded, too cynical to believe in the fantastic. Maybe we’re too smart for our own good.

Any way you look at it, we’ve lost a prestigious American publication that strove to report the facts, no matter how bizarre. As we gather ourselves in collective mourning, let us remember the better days. The days of “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Lost – Wandering Near Paris” “Man Searches for His Own Severed Head,” and “Chocoholic Mom Has Sugar-Coated Baby.”

Weekly World News, I salute you.

Thanks for reading.