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gvdubFew people are aware of the genesis of the Weekly World News. When the National Enquirer was switching over to becoming a celebrity driven paper printed on color presses in the late '70s, publisher Generoso Pope, Jr. (whose father had been the publisher of Il Progresso, the daily Italian language paper in New York City and was a good friend of reputed Mafioso, Frank Costello), never one to let equipment go to waste, decided to start a second paper, dedicated to publishing the types of stories that the Enquirer used to publish in the '50s and early '60s, so he could make use of the black and white presses that had, up until that time, been running the paper he had first brought to prominence 20 years earlier. And so WWN was born.
Though it started with the types of gory, gather-around-the-car accident story that had earlier spelled success for the Enquirer (WWN's 1976 cover shot of Elvis in his casket was one of the best selling issues ever), it soon started moving in some new directions, printing stories that could seemingly only be taken seriously by glue-huffing, meth-addled lobotomy patients. They frequently displayed a sly sense of social satire and provided employment for talented (and sometimes not so talented) photo-retouchers everywhere. When Photoshop became available, the quality and outrageousness of the photo work in the paper was markedly improved. One of my favorite examples of the lower end of photo quality was a cover shot of George H.W. Bush walking through the grounds of Camp David with a space alien. On close examination, it was possible to see the remnants of Barbara Bush's distinctive hairstyle that hadn't quite been totally removed from the alien's head.
We had a friend in New York who was the local stringer for WWN, despite also being an up-and-coming photojournalist. He would prowl local papers for the odd, the bizarre, the quirky, and those stories would be extracted, rewritten and submitted for some of the small sidebar pieces that filled space between BatBoy, Ed Anger, and Space Aliens (see, they did publish real news).
I'll miss WWN, even though I've heard they will continue as a web-only publication. For the past several years, I've been noticing that it's available in fewer and fewer stores, and am not totally surprised at the news that they're ceasing life as a print entity. I hate to think that the American public has become so jaded and uptight that there's no room left for Bigfoot and Nessie to throw a party on the banks of Loch Ness to celebrate BatBoy's upcoming nuptials. I just hope I get an invitation.
Though it started with the types of gory, gather-around-the-car accident story that had earlier spelled success for the Enquirer (WWN's 1976 cover shot of Elvis in his casket was one of the best selling issues ever), it soon started moving in some new directions, printing stories that could seemingly only be taken seriously by glue-huffing, meth-addled lobotomy patients. They frequently displayed a sly sense of social satire and provided employment for talented (and sometimes not so talented) photo-retouchers everywhere. When Photoshop became available, the quality and outrageousness of the photo work in the paper was markedly improved. One of my favorite examples of the lower end of photo quality was a cover shot of George H.W. Bush walking through the grounds of Camp David with a space alien. On close examination, it was possible to see the remnants of Barbara Bush's distinctive hairstyle that hadn't quite been totally removed from the alien's head.
We had a friend in New York who was the local stringer for WWN, despite also being an up-and-coming photojournalist. He would prowl local papers for the odd, the bizarre, the quirky, and those stories would be extracted, rewritten and submitted for some of the small sidebar pieces that filled space between BatBoy, Ed Anger, and Space Aliens (see, they did publish real news).
I'll miss WWN, even though I've heard they will continue as a web-only publication. For the past several years, I've been noticing that it's available in fewer and fewer stores, and am not totally surprised at the news that they're ceasing life as a print entity. I hate to think that the American public has become so jaded and uptight that there's no room left for Bigfoot and Nessie to throw a party on the banks of Loch Ness to celebrate BatBoy's upcoming nuptials. I just hope I get an invitation.