Extra!

Aren’t they ‘about to go under’ once or twice a decade? A watershed moment for my media sophistication came when, in a burst of nostalgia for a friend who used to give Shatneresque dramatic readings of Ed Anger’s column, I bought a copy of the WWN – this must have been in 1992 or so. And I saw two articles that I had first seen months earlier in the Boston Globe and the NY Times. Cold shivers doesn’t begin to capture that feeling.

This is the fine publication that alerted me of the onslaught of Zombies in my own home town, Blue Ridge GA. In a piece entitled “Hillbilly Zombies cause Mountain Mayhem”, (and I have a copy somewhere) the Weekly World News told abut the need for zombie traps (and pulled in an irrelevant Irish academic to tell us “zombies are people too”).
They also blew the whistle on 5 US Senator as Space Aliens. (My on Senator Sam Nunn’s office issued a statement “ok, you got us.”)

I once interviewed for a job at a law firm that represents American Media, Inc., parent corporation of the WWN, National Enquirer, and other fine publications. The partner in charge of their media practice was telling me about some of the interesting defamation defense cases he’d handled on behalf of the Enquirer. Letting my guard down, I mentioned that I was a fan of the WWN, and asked whether he’d had any interesting cases with them. He said he hadn’t, pointing out that their stories are so ridiculous they are probably libel-proof. Needless to say, I didn’t get an offer.

Your post prompted me to read some background on WWN, and I must say that I did not realize the degree to which they went beyond many of the other tabloids and were consciously running something close to The Onion – or maybe the WWF is a better analogy. For instance long-time comics writer Paul Kupperberg had joined not too long ago and penned things like WHY MOSES WANDERED IN THE DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS: He Lost the Map!


“A parchment map was found in a sealed urn not far from the remains of an Egyptian chariot,” said Rabbi Schmotkin-Fisher. “We surmise that Moses dropped it in the rush to get across the Red Sea before the parted waters came back together.

“It was etched by I Am’s own flaming finger, plainly mapping the way to the Promised Land. Remarkably, had they followed the Lord’s route, the trek would have taken the Israelites about a month, tops.”

Another interesting tidbit – apparently it was started in 1979 to make use of the remaining black and white presses when the Enquirer moved to color.

Oh, and THE RUSSIANS HAVE JFK’S BRAIN!!

The WWN was a step beyond the other tabloids

It was published by the same company that publishes the Star and National Enquirer, and of course, was the victim of an anthrax terrorist attack in ’01

WWN is a bit player in why the Washington press corps loved that joker George Bush compared to that awful man Al Gore who kept talking about the earth and lock boxes and stuff. The rest is history.

But, P. O’Neill, Batboy endorsed Gore!

Why don’t they just move it to the web?