It was with great sadness that I learned of the demise of one of my most trusted news sources, the inscrutable Weekly World News. The New York Times reports that the venerable supermarket staple is soon to shutting down the press.
This is a great loss to the world checkout line journalism. Weekly World News always brought a little realism to a venue overrun by guides to fashion, beauty, and romance. As I stood in line, placing my divider between my items and the person’s in front, it always brought comfort to know that WWN was there to balance out the “101 Ways to Please Your Man” articles of the womens mags with a good dose of “Elvis found alive in Peru!”
For the newspaper which brought us Bat Boy and that crazy alien which endorsed U.S. presidents,the sun has now set, leaving those of us in the checkout lines to Sodoku books, sex guides, and Brangelina. For our serious news, we must now turn to The New York Times.
Cheer up!
You’ll still be able to visit WWN on the web. WNYC’s On the Media for this week has story about the end of the printed WWN which includes clips from Bat Boy: the Musical. Sounds good to me.