Weekly World News

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Weekly World News was a magazine from the USA , according to the subtitle "The World's only reliable Newspaper" (The only trustworthy newspaper in the world).

history

WWN brought fantastic reports from the field of tabloid journalism week after week , reaching a circulation of millions. According to information from the journalists, many Americans had banned their “normal” daily newspaper from their homes for years and based their entire worldview solely on information from the WWN. According to the editorial staff, however, this message was to be treated with caution - and therefore fit perfectly with the image.

In 1979, the National Enquirer first appeared in color, who decided publisher to use further for the vacant capacity of the printing press, a new magazine in black and white to launch. So WWN was founded and filled with stories that didn't make it into the Enquirer.

WWN was shaped by Eddie Clontz, who died in 2004, who started there in 1981 at the age of 33 and worked his way up to the position of chief editor. He banned the classic celebrity stories and instead encouraged journalists to create fantastic stories. He himself wrote pamphlets under the pseudonym Ed Anger about gays, foreigners, speed limits and the like.

However, it had its greatest success in the spring of 1988 when a housewife from Kalamazoo, Michigan called the newsroom and told them that she had seen Elvis Presley . This resulted in the now world-famous saying "Elvis is alive" and the myth that the King only faked his death. This edition had 1.2 million copies sold, the highest circulation in WWN history . In addition, she had potential for follow-up stories such as “There was a double in the coffin” and “The first interview”.

In the end, the stories were no longer written by the “ Foreign Legion of Journalism” (Clontz), but by authors of trivial art. Past Editor in Chief Jeff Rovin is a successful science fiction book writer (writes books for Tom Clancy ) and has worked for DC Comics .

The newspaper recently had a circulation of 80,000 copies. Their readership was divided: on the one hand people who see a surrealist satire magazine in WWN and on the other hand the "true believers", conspiracy theorists and religious fundamentalists who, despite the warning on page two, believed everything that was put in front of them by the editorial team. For their part, they had to balance their stories so that they could be read in both ways.

Examples of subject areas of the paper, which is strongly oriented towards the tabloid style, are:

  • Elvis is alive ! Housewife sees King in the supermarket
  • Aliens healed me from diabetes
  • Man gives birth to baby
  • The moon landing was only posed
  • Noah's Ark found
  • I'm having Bigfoot's baby!
  • Devil's face photographed on a giant asteroid
  • The definitive proof that God exists
  • Frightened villagers flee from nasty devil chicken
  • Gold-eating termites attack Fort Knox
  • First interview with extraterrestrial visitor
  • Titanic captain was a woman
  • The tenth planet in our solar system could be home to hell

The paper came to Europe in the early 1990s: for five years journalists Peter J. Muller ( Netherlands ) and Joachim Steinkamp (Germany) brought up De Nieuwe for the Netherlands and Flanders and Neue Spezial for Germany, Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland the market.

The print edition was discontinued in August 2007; the last issue appeared on the 27th of the month.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ spiegel.de: Off for the "only reliable newspaper in the world" August 27, 2007, seen on August 27, 2007
  2. ^ Washingtonpost.com: All the News That Seemed Unfit to Print August 7, 2007, viewed August 23, 2007
  3. ↑ Danny Kringiel: The Incredible Story. Cult tabloid “Weekly World News”. In: Spiegel Online. SPIEGEL ONLINE GmbH, accessed on July 13, 2011 .