I never bought the newspaper Weekly World News, but I perused it a few times and obviously it was a load of quackery like The Onion. But did WWN try to pass itself off as real news, or was it openly satirical like The Onion? Was it openly comedic, or did they want people to actually believe what they were reading?
…and did anyone actually believe it?
Did people actually believe it? Sure, some people will believe anything. Was it written tongue in cheek? I sure hope so.
I remember reading an article about the WWN staff years ago. They were mostly highly-educated folks with journalism degrees from eminent schools, and they were having a lot of fun. I think the article said the pay had to be fairly high because it would be hard to work anywhere else afterwards, but I don’t really recall. Anyway, it was tongue-in-cheek. Bat Boy lives!
“Ed Anger”. Brilliant.
I think it was purely satirical, not openly. The joke isn’t funny if you have to explain it.
They had a huge audience on college campuses. It was hilarious, and intended to be.
Believers? You can find a zillion people here who believe in conspiracy theories. How much of a jump to bigfoot having triplets by aliens is that?
I actually know some people who were in an article featured in WWN. Their story of being caught in a freak storm on Lake Erie was okay, as far as it went, but it was WWN’s own initiative that added the menacing sea monster…
I no longer know who to vote for since I can no longer see who the alien endorses.
My first impression was that the target audience was the hip and cynical, who read it ironically, but if you look at the advertisers you find that the target audience tended to be more towards the gullible with advertisements for psychics, healing crystals, lottery number choosing methods etc.
There was also a small article one time about a someone shooting people with a blow gun in the DC area, which was based on fact. The only difference was that they seemed to suggest some African native connection when most likely it was really just a prankster.
Much of what they print(ed), outside of the obviously outlandish articles, was at least based on the kernel of a true story. I learned this back in the early '90s when I was perusing a random issue in a stack of WWN my then-boss had brought in to work for the amusement of our customers.
I came across a short article about a man who had murdered his first wife and then, after doing prison time for that crime, attacked his second wife with an axe. Thing was, I personally knew the man named in the article, when I was a teenager, and the “funny” thing about the article was that their “fact-twisting” actually made the story less sensational.
The basic mistake in the article was the order of the wives. The “first wife” that he killed was actually his second wife; the “second wife” in the article was actually his first wife, with whom he had three sons, (the oldest being the same age as me), and with whom he reconciled and remarried after being released from prison.
The thing about the guy was that he was one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. Unless he was drinking — then he apparently became an angry, violent asshole (I never saw him in that condition). I don’t know the circumstances of his divorce from his first wife, but she and their sons attended the same church as my family, and we were all friends.
My dad, a state patrol officer at the time, happened to meet the guy while the guy was still in one of the state max-security prisons, where the guy had found religion and turned himself around. The guy eventually ended up in the state “honor camp”, which is just what it sounds like. It was basically a step more secure than a halfway house for parolees, essentially for prisoners who were close to being paroled and who could be trusted not to try to escape. It was out in the middle of a national forest and had no walls or fences. My family visited him there a number of times, and that’s where I learned the story of his crime.
His second wife was having an affair, and he found out where she and her lover were going to be one evening. In a drunken rage, he took his shotgun and waited outside the restaurant they were in, intending to kill the lover. When they came out of the restaurant, he fired, but hit and killed his wife instead. Then he unloaded his weapon, laid it down, and sat on the curb to wait for the police. He admitted his guilt, was genuinely remorseful, and went off to prison without protest. I don’t know how long he was actually in prison, though it couldn’t have been very long, since his youngest son from his first marriage was only about 10 when he was released. But in prison, as I mentioned, he found religion, turned himself around, and became a model prisoner.
Once he had been transferred to the honor camp, he was regularly visited by his first wife and their sons, and they got to know each other again, and shortly after he was paroled they remarried. He was a model citizen for years. The rest of the story I only know third-hand, as my family had moved away by then, but apparently, at some point he started drinking again, and one day he got angry and hit his wife with an axe. She wasn’t seriously injured, but it was still a parole violation, and he was sent back to prison.
I just assume that the WWN came across the story of the axe attack on the AP wire or some similar source, and that the story was probably just a brief blurb. So with just a short story lacking in details, they took what they had and dressed it up a bit, probably just to fill a couple column inches that needed filling.
IIRC, they even had some realistic reporting in it, if you forget about the sensationalist front pages. Also, the Owner/Editor, something like that, was on Sally Jesse Raphael one time, and was saying some cool stuff like “These things are printed as reported by real people. Who are we to doubt the words of these good people?”
I think that they were totally brilliant, all in all. Even their most ridiculous claims got my attention, in a way that many other ridiculous claims couldn’t.
The loss of his column makes me pig biting mad!
As others have said, some of it was true news stories but spun. I remember there was a hazing incident I read about where a kid jumped off a cliff and died. And they spun it with a headline like “Man Kills Himself to Join Fraternity!”
But then some of it was just some satirists having fun.
I miss Batboy the most.
And the ads! Omg, the things that people will try and buy. It was a HELL of a lotta bang for the buck
Besides all the articles, comic strip and t-shirts there are
action figures
a novel (OTTOMH Going Mutant- Batboy Exposed!)
and a musical.
I saw the musical here in Philly. I expected cheezy goodness, much as you’d see on MST3K. Instead, I got some great songs and the best portrayal of somebody slowly losing their mind I’ve ever seen.
I need to spend even more time on the internet! I’ve missed this!
Thank you, DocCathode, I will become a fatter, more cheeto infused person! 
According to the book I Watched A Wild Hog Eat My Baby*, Anger was actually created and written by a liberal Jewish man.
Anger’s columns were collected in the book Pave The Rain Forest And Give The Teachers Stun Guns! Sadly, I don’t have a copy.
*While the title is deliberately sensational, the book is an extremely well researched history of the tabloid in America with specific attention to the National Enquirer. I don’t remember where my copy is or I’d give more details.
I still don’t think this is answering the question. Have they ever admitted to being a satirical publication, as The Onion has done in the past?
I know that the short-lived program on USA had a disclaimer. I don’t remember ever seeing such a disclaimer in the printed version.
It still exists as a web site. The legal page may answer the first part of your question.
from the link "Weekly World News articles are drawn from a number of different sources and some are fictitious or satirical. Weekly World News uses invented names in some stories, except in cases where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental. The reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment.
No mutants or aliens were harmed in the making of this website. Any further disclaimers neglected to be made are hereby reserved.”