US: The Weekly World News, America's spoof tabloid magazine, is shutting up shop after 28 years. Oliver Burkemanlaments its demise
These days, when you can't even trust the BBC, the last thing we needed was to lose the planet's single remaining dependable source of current affairs reporting.
Yet that's what appears to be happening: the 28-year-old Weekly World News- the US tabloid magazine that bills itself "the world's only reliable newspaper", deaf to the killjoys who claim all its stories are made up - is to suspend publication, both in print and online. (Its owner, American Media, gave staff no reason for the move, though circulation has long been in decline.)
It's a harsh blow: serious investigative journalism is finally dead - unlike Elvis, Princess Diana, JFK, Marilyn Monroe and Hitler, who are of course all alive and well: the WWNhas, over the years, had the "shocking photos" to prove it.
Photos in the WWNare always "shocking", in the same way that its discoveries - like the strands of hair from God's beard, or the people as small as ants, are always made by "a scientist".
But the magazine can't really be accused of overhyping its exclusives: they're so white-hot that the lily-livered mainstream media daren't follow them up.
Where was the New York Times, or the Guardian, when the WWNbroke the story about Saddam Hussein's secret arsenal of dinosaurs? Or his gay romance with Osama bin Laden, culminating in their adoption of a shaved ape baby? And they say there was no link between Iraq and 9/11 ...
Aliens feature heavily in the WWN, as do rednecks, who are forever shooting things - aliens, often enough. (There are also redneck aliens.)
Famously, there's also Bat Boy, who is half bat, half boy and all superhero. Like much of the popular press, the WWNis angry about migrants - "Alien Hired To Make Sci-Fi TV Politically Correct!" - and is constantly foretelling imminent doom (the next Great Depression always seems to be a few weeks away, threatening the livelihoods of the world's most powerful people, which may be why George Bush, as the WWNrevealed, has been campaigning to become the next pope).
The fact that the magazine seems to be folding is good news for the world's scoundrels, hell-bent on evading the public eye (like the doctor who rejoined conjoined twins when they couldn't pay their medical bills).
But it's a tragedy for the rest of us.