Weekly World News - Definition and Overview

The Weekly World News is a tabloid newspaper published by American Media. It combines wire reports of strange news with in-house writings and columns. These include Ed Anger (opinion), Dotti Primrose (advice) and Serena/Sonya Sabak (psychic).

Semi-regular stories follow the progress of Bat Boy; the half-bat, half-boy superhero, and P'lod the extraterrestrial who became involved in Earth politics and had an affair with Hillary Clinton. Other recurring themes include the oncoming great depression/apocalypse, and newly found lost prophecies. A new addition is cartoonist Peter Bagge's "Adventures of Batboy".

The WWN is credited with starting the wave of Elvis sightings in the early 1990s with a series of articles claiming that Elvis Presley had faked his death and had recently emerged from years of seclusion to prepare for a comeback. Obviously altered photos purported to show a gray-haired balding Elvis sneaking into a movie theater and coming out of a Burger King restaurant. When the US Postal Service conducted a poll to determine the design of the Elvis commemorative postage stamp, the WWN conducted its own poll pitting the USPS' 1950s Elvis and 1970s Elvis versus their own 1990s Elvis. The WWN's Elvis naturally won.

The magazine claims it always prints the truth (typical slogan: "Nothing but the truth: The Weekly World News!"). So many of the stories are so obviously fake it seems these claims are intended as a joke.

When most of the supermarket tabloids were acquired by Fleet Street publishers they switched to celebrity gossip but the Weekly World News remains devoted to weirdness. The WWN is also unique in that it is printed entirely in black and white. Like most of the tabloids in the US, the Weekly World News is published in Boca Raton, Florida.

External link

• Weekly World News (http://www.weeklyworldnews.com)