[Floyd Robertson]

Say goodbye to the print version of one of the funniest "newspapers" ever.

Robert Seltzer: Forget facts; Weekly World News had a lot to say

Web Posted: 08/18/2007 06:21 PM CDT

San Antonio Express-News Rational people know that Elvis expired on Aug. 16, 1977 — a death that sent his spangled jumpsuits, if not his music, into mothballs.

Among hard-core fans, however, Elvis inspires love, devotion and a fierce resistance to anything resembling his obituary. To these people, Elvis is not dead; he is missing, and his face — greasy hair, curled lip and all — should be plastered on milk cartons throughout the country.

Enter the Weekly World News, a tabloid that sees the bizarre as normal and the normal as bizarre.

The newspaper — is that too lofty a term for this publication? — thrives on Elvis sightings, turning him into the Bigfoot of the entertainment world. Well, if Elvis is not dead, the Elvis watch may be on life support: The Weekly World News, suffering from declining circulation in recent years, will cease publication on Aug. 27.


The magazine will continue to operate its Web site, the London Observer reported, but computer screens tend to sterilize the most outlandish stories, and true devotees will miss the cheesy newsprint and the lurid black-and-white photographs that complement the words.

Ah, the words — adjectives piled upon adjectives, with a robust helping of adverbs, each one designed to push the limits of credulity. In a culture that seems to prize images above words, should we mourn the demise of a publication that was so inelegant in its use of language?

Probably not; unsophisticated speech is a barrier to understanding — we have seen this phenomenon play out with the communicator in chief — and the last thing we need is another forum for literary abuses.

And yet... and yet... sometimes the real world is too real, and if takes an Elvis sighting or a Batboy sighting or a flying cat sighting to make it more exciting, where is the harm?

Most readers realize such reports are nonsense, and people who think the items are credible probably think Mad Magazine is credible, too.

The newspaper once acknowledged its penchant for fabricating stories, not that we needed a disclaimer from the Weekly World News.

Consider some of the scoops the publication has given us since its arrival in 1979, according to various reports:

President Clinton meets with "alien" — the Spielberg variety, not the Tancredo variety.
A pit bull eats a mobile home.

Soviets clone 10,000 Hitlers.

In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Mark Miller, a former writer for the tabloid, explained the balancing act his editor demanded of him.

"Half the readers realize the stories are tongue-in-cheek; the other half believe they're all true," his editor told him. "You have to write the stories to satisfy both groups."

The tightrope walk would prove too treacherous for the magazine. It succumbed to the same enemy that has conquered so many other publications — declining circulation. The company, according to Miller, reported a $160 million net loss for 2006, a burden exacerbated by a debt of $1 billion.

Weekly World News writers subscribed to a simple philosophy: If facts encumber a good story, then change the facts. That tenet is good for novelists, bad for journalists. So the demise of the magazine might not be such a bad thing.

Then again, without the Weekly World News to peruse during our wait, the grocery store checkout line will become a little more boring. And if Elvis happens to show up somewhere, who will report it? The King must be spinning in his grave — or wherever he happens to be hiding out.