Weekly World News
| You gotta spin it to win it Media |
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| Stop the presses! |
| We want pictures of Spider-Man! |
| Extra! Extra! |
The Weekly World News (aka WWN) was everybody's favorite spoof newspaper. The paper regularly featured stories on the pseudoscience-du-jour. Batboy sightings! Presidential candidates meet with space aliens! Man pregnant! 8000 pound woman loses 7800 pounds on a vinegar and garlic diet! Batboy pregnant! Batboy pregnant with Bigfoot's baby!
Several stories first run by the paper in the early 1990s proved to be their most popular, and became running gags associated with the paper since: "Batboy", and a series of meetings by space aliens with U.S. presidential candidates. WWN also ran a regular column by Ed Anger, "My America", a spoof of right-wing populist rants that was difficult to tell from the real thing.
Sadly, on 24 July 2007, the print version of Weekly World News ceased publication, a victim of competition from the Internet. In 2008 "Bat Boy LLC" bought the rights to the company and launched a Weekly World News website. They hope to someday revive the print version.
Some unfortunate souls took Weekly World News articles seriously. Those people are generally considered to be at the pinnacle of stupidity. For instance, in October, 2010, the Weekly World News reported that the Los Angeles Police Department was going to buy 10,000 jetpacks.[1] Fox News reported it as serious story,[2] only to retract it an hour later.
The Weekly World News originated as a spin-off from the National Enquirer as a way of separating the spoof UFO and Bigfoot articles from the Hollywood gossip columns. The void left by the demise of the Weekly World News in the realm of U.S. supermarket tabloids is filled by the Sun, the other major tabloid to focus on spoof pseudoscience.
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- ↑ The Weekly World News Jetpacks story
- ↑ [Gawker.com: archive.is, web.archive.org Coverage of Fox's coverage]