Weekly World News: The World's Only Reliable News(paper)

May 11, 2017 12:42 PM

The Weekly World News was billed as The World's Only Reliable Newspaper. It was born as a celebrity gossip mag, a way of keeping the old presses running when American Media Inc.'s National Enquirer switched to color, but under the guidance of Eddie Clontz, it became something wonderful and crazy (and occasionally true). But nothing good lasts forever, and WWN shut down in 2007 (previously), only to find new life as an internet-only publication the next year, returning* as The World's Only Reliable News. It's great that Ed Anger lives on in the digital realm, but if you're craving replicas of the original publications, Google books has an extensive archive (previously, twice), from Oct 13, 1981 to the final publication dated Aug 20, 2007.

If you want to read more about the history of Weekly World News, The Washington Post had a 5-page write-up (print formatted on one page, without the header image of WWN editors Eddie Clontz, left, and Sal Ivone in 1992), and The New York Times had a nice write-up for the print version's ending.

More tidbits from the paper's past: American Media sold WWN in 1991, and the tone changed. Clontz left the publication in 2000, and he died four years later. The internet "rebirth" of WWN was thanks to a long-time fan, Neil McGinness, who with his new company, Bat Boy L.L.C., bought WWN from American Media.

And like any good treasure hunt, dig around and you can find various gems, like the GIANT 76-Page New Year's Special from 1996, or the SPECIAL 76-page Collectors' Edition from July 6, 1999, both with COLORFUL COVERS!

More WWN mentions, previously:
- Included in the epic High Weirdness by Mail post (2012)
- A passing mention to the new WWN website in a post on the (sadly, now defunct) CNN "beta" t-shirt store (2008)
- A direct reference to the WWN website's article on Nuking Lincoln (2002)
* Thanks to this prior post from 2002, I see WWN has been online back before 2002, and two prior WWN.com posts from 2000 indicate an older existence, possibly back to 1997

posted by filthy light thief (55 comments total)

"Hey Mom, I find it interesting that you refer to the Weekly World News as, 'The paper.' The paper contains facts."

"This paper contains facts. And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world. Right? Plenty of facts. 'Pregnant man gives birth.' That's a fact. "
posted by CaseyB at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2017 [18 favorites]

A So I Married An Axe Murderer reference in the first comment? Be still my heart!
posted by zombieflanders at 12:47 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I had a paper subscription for a while just before Eddie Clontz left; it was the greatest thing ever. I had a hard time throwing out issues, though, because they were just too funny to recycle. In the interests of not becoming a hoarder, I couldn't keep buying it.

.
posted by asperity at 12:52 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have had a subscription to three print publications in my lifetime: EGM, Mad Magazine, and the Weekly World News (all in the early-to-mid 90s, now that I think about it). Pretty sure my grandmother bought it for me because she thought it was a gas, too.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:55 PM on May 11, 2017

Somewhere I still have my "12 US Senators Are Space Aliens" t-shirt.
posted by vibrotronica at 12:56 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Back in high school, on most Friday nights, my bff and I would sit and read Weekly World News and just laugh our asses off.

(We would cap off the night by watching Morton Downey Jr. Fun times.)
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 1:03 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Man, I'm torn between "We NEED the WWN" and "The world is too fucked up for the WWN"
posted by mikelieman at 1:04 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

Warms my heart to see the batboy tag.
posted by k5.user at 1:09 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

My friend Grant was a regular writer for the WWN. For at least two birthdays, he concocted stories using my real name as a gift. I still have the copies (in one story, I was a Midwestern tween who summoned super strength to lift a car off her dad; in another, I was a woman who owned the World's Largest Cat).
posted by Kitteh at 1:09 PM on May 11, 2017 [29 favorites]

"Check the hot sheets"
posted by lalochezia at 1:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fuck you, Trump presidency and actively harmful fake news like Pizzagate, for ruining my enjoyment of this stuff.
posted by Artw at 1:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [8 favorites]

I loved this growing up. At one point, my preteen self ended up in an AOL chatroom dedicated to WWN, and ended up getting a Batboy poster signed by .... someone. It might still be at my parents house somewhere.

WWN had the best crosswords too.
posted by Fig at 1:12 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

My little salute to it.
posted by Artw at 1:14 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

I was a huge fan and always had dreams of writing for them. I was at a party in the early 90's and met the guy who wrote the "Benji Died Of Aids" cover story. I said I had always wanted to write for them and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said "Operators are waiting for your call."

..still never worked up the gumption.
posted by lumpenprole at 1:19 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

My roommate had a subscription to this in the late 90s, and we'd hang our favorite articles in the kitchen. My personal favorite was a tiny article claiming notorious outlaw Jesse James was an accomplished juggler who could "keep nine potatoes in the air at the same time!"
posted by cottoncandybeard at 1:27 PM on May 11, 2017

Aw, I fondly remember the time (in the late 80's) my brother convinced an English teacher to let them all write fake Ed Anger columns for their next assignment. His had all sorts of wonderful skewering of the Ed Anger misogyny, and I knew for sure he'd turn out ok. I still remember that it started with, "I'm madder than an ant in a toilet bowl..."
posted by ldthomps at 1:31 PM on May 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

Some guy I worked with wrote an impassioned editorial for our company newsletter about how this story illustrated the decline of polite society because Abraham Lincoln, revived on an operating table, addressed the doctors respectfully, whereas a young person would not.

Gentlemen, where am I?
Not in any America you know, Mr. President.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:33 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

On Einswine, the world's smartest pig:

"I walked in and saw him computin' all kinds of tough math problems," Kratchner recalls.

Kratchner's son showed the results to his math teacher - and amazingly, the porker had solved every equation correctly.

It's that last phrase that takes it from amusing to brilliant.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:37 PM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]

When Eddie Clontz died, the Economist ran a delightful and much-deserved obituary.
posted by grounded at 1:46 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I couldn't get enough of this when I was a kid. I thought Ed Anger was real, which I suppose after all that he was; he just didn't exist. I also got a kick out of the relentlessly mean Dear Dotti, which may have set me on the path to judginess.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:51 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Dang it! You beat me to "So I Married and Axe Murderer".
posted by AJScease at 1:52 PM on May 11, 2017

When this first went online I looked for this event that actually happened in my neighborhood when I was a kid. I dunno about the motive the article puts forward but other than that I think they got it 100% right. Go figure.
posted by Ampersand692 at 1:52 PM on May 11, 2017

"This paper contains facts. And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world. Right? Plenty of facts. 'Pregnant man gives birth.' That's a fact."

I am not acquainted with the source material here but I can tell you that when I first read it I heard it as Melissa McCarthy doing her Spicer impersonation so that was good enough for me.

In fact now I can't not hear her voice when I read it.

--

When I was in my teens I looked upon this paper with disdain because it was so obviously churning out nonsense to make a profit. This post is the first time I've ever had reason to regret that decision and now I'm left wondering how many years of entertainment I missed out on.
posted by komara at 1:54 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I really miss seeing Bat Boy at the supermarket checkout. Beats the hell out of seeing Trump on every fucking issue of the Enquirer.
posted by Ber at 1:57 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

cottoncandybeard: My roommate had a subscription to this in the late 90s, and we'd hang our favorite articles in the kitchen. My personal favorite was a tiny article claiming notorious outlaw Jesse James was an accomplished juggler who could "keep nine potatoes in the air at the same time!"

Found it! Also: The Christmas Jesse James played Santa Claus
posted by filthy light thief at 2:06 PM on May 11, 2017

The WWN was delightfully prescient of the kind of nonsense I enjoy today on Twitter.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm reconstructing this from memory, so I may have garbled it, but the best cover ever was I think in 85 or 86 -- Russian Nuclear Sub Finds Killer Alien Mermaids At South Pole! The illustration was, of course, a guy in a fur hat emerging from the conning tower of a sub, staring openmouthed at a mermaid sitting on an iceberg with fangs and deelybopper antennae.
posted by LizardBreath at 2:11 PM on May 11, 2017

Great post. Some of my fondest memories of grad school center around the subscription to the WWN that some of us bought for the student lounge. We'd sit around during lunches riffing on the stories. It's more than a little chilling, this many years later, to realize that such ridiculously over-the-top fakery has been de-ironicized, and has to a large extent become quite mainstream in the broadcast media, to the point of being incorporated into our political messaging. So... not quite as funny any more.
posted by mondo dentro at 2:16 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Great paper! One thing that always pissed me off was that people referenced the National Enquirer as a source of bat-shit crazy news DECADES after the Enquirer had switched to (sometimes) fake celebrity gossip as their M.O., when clearly these people were referring to the Weekly World News but were just too lazy to get it right.
posted by kozad at 2:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]

My birthday is January 5, so I was thrilled when one year Ed Anger wrote a column declaring January 5 to be National Smoke-In Day, and my friends and I toked up a bunch. Well, we would have anyway, but we felt JUSTIFIED...
posted by AJaffe at 2:26 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I went to college with Countess Sophia Sabak's son. Good times.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 2:52 PM on May 11, 2017

WWN is responsible for the time I laughed so hard in the middle of a CVS that they had to ask me to leave.

The headline was "POPE MISSING: 'He just wandered off', Vatican says", complete with photo of someone wearing pope-gear, seen blurrily and from behind, in Very Dark Woods with vague intimations of bears. I think the pope at the time was Benedict, but I would have laughed equally hard at any point in my lifetime. In fact, every so often I think about this and laugh all over again.

Thank you, Weekly World News!
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 3:03 PM on May 11, 2017 [19 favorites]

WWN played a big role in my childhood. I can track some of my growth based on reactions to the headlines. At 12: "Could it be possible scientists actually caught a glimpse of heaven in their telescopes? I wonder..." to 14: "How can anyone believe UFOs are seducing Earth women? Who buys this shit?" to 16: "Fidel Castro is in love with Rosanne Barr and plans on carrying her off to his Communist paradise? Hilarious!" Definitely more effective than my HS English classes for learning how to be skeptical, and how to recognize satire.

Part of the learning process was with Ed Anger. Can still remember when it finally hit me that Ed Anger's ignorance was not in earnest. What's really depressing is that Ed in his most pig-biting insanity was actually to the left (and more rational) than the teabaggers and the Trumpets.

My then 12 yr old niece got to experience this a little with my WWN book (back blurb-headline: "Bat Boy Eats New WWN Book. Poops Truth for Days!!") I did my part by solemnly assuring her everything in the book was true. Some more than others.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:17 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

Pregnant man gives birth.

I won the office pool big time on that one. Everyone else thought he'd miscarry.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:54 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Somewhere I still have my "12 US Senators Are Space Aliens" t-shirt.

Just two weeks ago I went through a bunch of old framed pictures and found that issue! I had it framed for my office when I worked in the political realm. Those carefree days when our senators were aliens and not Nazi sympathizers.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:05 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

(sniff) I never thought I'd see you again Bat
Boy
posted by superelastic at 4:07 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fuck you, Trump presidency and actively harmful fake news like Pizzagate, for ruining my enjoyment of this stuff.

It happened earlier; if not some time after 9/11, then at the time of the Tea Party. The same thing happened to the whole genre of conspiracy theory: the old sense of playful Fortean Times/X Files bricolage and wonder (“Underground tunnels full of aliens? Chupacabras? The West Virginia Mothman? Golly-gee, you don't say!”) got crowded out by hordes of Dumb Mean Hicks and their drumbeat of dull, unimaginative hate (“Gay Jewish Islamo-Marxists gave my dog AIDS, and they're coming for you!”). There's no wonder or joy any more, just venom. The rise of Gamergate/the alt-right was just the cancer metastatising.
posted by acb at 4:18 PM on May 11, 2017 [12 favorites]

Hard to keep current on spontaneous human combustion news without WWN.
posted by Killick at 4:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

If you enjoy this sort of thing, you might get a kick out of William Kotzwinkle's novel The Midnight Examiner.
posted by ovvl at 4:32 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Relevant Weird Al song.
posted by hanov3r at 4:53 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

There's no wonder or joy any more, just venom.

I've thought about that a lot lately. Part of it is the Internet and the ease of distribution. Some of the stuff I received, thanks to High Weirdness, was just as bitter & hateful as the stuff on /r/conspiracy, but it was so far removed from day-to-day life that it still seemed otherworldly. A glimpse into a strange parallel universe. Too bad the universes merged and the mirror universe is now dominant.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

When I was in my teens I looked upon this paper with disdain because it was so obviously churning out nonsense to make a profit. This post is the first time I've ever had reason to regret that decision and now I'm left wondering how many years of entertainment I missed out on.

If it makes you feel better when I was in my teens I read this paper because it was so obviously churning out nonsense to make a profit. In these recent years of fake news I've had many reasons to regret the decision to support the nascent death of reality based news and now I'm left wondering how much I sacrificed for brief moments of entertainment.
posted by roolya_boolya at 5:11 PM on May 11, 2017

I've thought about that a lot lately. Part of it is the Internet and the ease of distribution. Some of the stuff I received, thanks to High Weirdness, was just as bitter & hateful as the stuff on /r/conspiracy, but it was so far removed from day-to-day life that it still seemed otherworldly.

There was stuff like Answer Me! and Peter Sotos and Boyd Rice and such, but that was in the minority; a few bitter/disturbed people stewing in their own hate and being assholes on a small scale. Since then, the virus has become airborne and infected broad swathes of the population, including the established centre-right political parties in several countries.

Perhaps this was inevitable; if so. then perhaps humans really are a plague.
posted by acb at 5:21 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

If it makes you feel better when I was in my teens I read this paper because it was so obviously churning out nonsense to make a profit.

But this was artisanal nonsense, hand-hewn by skilled human labour. Such a thing barely exists in this age of cheap algorithmically-generated nonsense. Who's going to spend their days making up stories about World War 2 bombers on the Moon just to get lost among the output of Twitter bots and neural-network mashups?
posted by acb at 5:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]

I also had a subscription to WWN when I was in college in the mid-90s. I once wrote a suck-up letter to Dotti and got two autographed photos in return, one of which I gave to my friend.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 5:43 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I wallpapered my room in high school with the funniest WWN articles. Bat Boy had his own section along with Santa Claus and the Sasquatch.
posted by benzenedream at 6:31 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh man I loved Bat Boy so. I made a Bat Boy lampshade - just a collage on the theme of Bat Boy. And then one stellar year the WWN actually designed Bat Boy Christmas cards for cutting out and xeroxing. All my friends got Bat Boy that year, it was glorious.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:32 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Bat boy!
posted by Artw at 7:45 PM on May 11, 2017

My fave WWN headline from the mid-80s - "Ape Rapes Lady. World Waits for Baby."
posted by AJScease at 7:55 PM on May 11, 2017

Ha I reviewed Bat Boy Lives for Popmatters. My one and only review for that site. Still proud of the phrase "lackluster Photoshop japery." 😎
posted by jcruelty at 8:06 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's getting hard to believe that it was that recently that a large percentage of people just thought that shit was funny instead of believing it.
posted by bongo_x at 9:29 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

oh, metafilter. you really are my people .

BAT BOY 4EVA!!!
posted by lapolla at 12:14 AM on May 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Fuck you, Trump presidency and actively harmful fake news like Pizzagate, for ruining my enjoyment of this stuff.

I think that might be why there's such an outpouring of nostalgia here for this much sillier fake news.
posted by atoxyl at 1:58 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

Thanks everyone for explaining why I was feeling nostalgic too! I used to enjoy a good conspiracy, woo woo and silly stories but now I can't.
posted by Calzephyr at 5:35 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

WWN is still quite active on FB http://www.facebook.com/weeklyworldnews
posted by huntforbatboy at 4:20 PM on May 12, 2017