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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Somewhere, Bat Boy is weeping. Who will tell his story?
The bizarre tabloid saga launched by the Weekly World News in 1992 began when explorers stumbled upon the orphaned half bat, half child two miles underground and followed his adventures in modern life: a wild car chase with police, endorsing presidential candidate Al Gore, foiling a nuclear bomb plot, and, later, failing in a bid to be California’s governor.
It was the type of absurd tale that could exist only in the pages of the Weekly World News. The supermarket tabloid has set new standards for mock journalism since its creation in 1979. But after almost 30 years covering world news like nobody else, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based publication is shutting down.
Its last issue is Aug. 27.
While the News’ influence can still be seen in satirical newspapers like The Onion and even in “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, the paper’s first editor in chief said the Weekly World News pushed boundaries in a way no one has matched.
“There’s nothing close to it today,” said Iain Calder, of Boca Raton, a former top editor at the News’ parent company, American Media Inc. “From the very beginning, we set out to do something totally unique. It’s very sad to see its demise.”
Brazenly calling itself “The World’s Only Reliable Newspaper,” the Weekly World News brought readers inside politics: “Twelve Members of Congress are Space Aliens!” Health: “Photo of Elvis Cured My Cancer!” History: “Abraham Lincoln Was a Woman!” And anything else its writers and editors could concoct: “Jesus’ Sandals Found!”
But the reasons the News is closing are all too ordinary in the age of new media, Calder said: a declining print readership; dwindling ad sales; increased online competition for strange news; and a greater public appetite for tabloid celebrity and entertainment news in the check out line. In its heyday in the 1980s, Calder said, the News had a circulation of 1.2 million, compared with about 80,000 today.
American Media, which publishes the Weekly World News along with the celebrity tabloids the National Enquirer and Star magazine, declined to comment. It released only a one-paragraph explanation late last month that simply said changes in the magazine marketplace forced it to close the tabloid. For now, it will continue the publication online at www.weeklyworldnews.com.
In the end, Calder said, the newspaper that blazed its own trail failed for many of the same reasons legitimate newspapers are struggling.
“The paper was so outrageous, and then the real world became even more outrageous and (the paper) fell off,” said Mike Foley, a master lecturer at the University of Florida and the former executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times. “I’m saddened.”
Joe Garden, the features editor at The Onion, said the News’ influence shouldn’t be overlooked.
“It became a cultural touchstone to some people,” Garden said. “It managed to bring weird fake news to grocery stores across the United States, which if you think about it is pretty remarkable. It’s amazing it lasted as long as it did.”
When American Media created the Weekly World News in 1979, it already had a near monopoly on salacious celebrity gossip with the National Enquirer.
The News took a different approach, Calder said. Its writers and editors would read dozens of international papers for odd ball bits of news that could be expanded, and sometimes exaggerated, for an American audience. The format was a success except for one thing, Calder said: There simply wasn’t enough odd ball news to satisfy the growing demand for the strange and unusual.
That’s when the editors took the next step, Calder said, and began making up entire stories. In the ensuing years, as popularity of the News grew on college campuses and in large cities, it evolved into a lampoon of the Enquirer and the tabloid style, complete with bizarre stories and screaming headlines.
What made the News work wasn’t just the sensational stories, Calder said. It was also that its original editors and writers had experience at legitimate newspapers. One such staffer was Boynton Beach, Fla.‘s, Eddie Clontz, who joined the paper as a writer in the 1980s and later succeeded Calder as editor. Calder said Clontz, who died in 2004, exemplified the type of “mad genius” who artfully blended the ridiculous around nuggets of truth.
Clontz was the first to bring Elvis Presley back from the dead with the iconic 1988 cover that shouted “Elvis Is Alive!” and showed an obviously fake, gray-haired Elvis.
Random Elvis sightings became one of the hallmark reoccurring series in the News, inspiring parodies in newspapers and on television.
“He was incredibly smart, very well read,” said Foley, who worked with Clontz at the former St. Petersburg Evening Independent in the early 1970s. “The brilliance in what they did was getting others to play along.”
A picture still circulates of President George W. Bush on the campaign trail in 2000 holding up a copy of the Weekly World News with the headline “Space Alien Backs Bush for President!”
“I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would confuse what they did with journalism,” said William McKeen, chairman of the Department of Journalism at the University of Florida. “It was pure entertainment and it filled a certain niche.”
One that Calder said still exists. The challenge today is holding onto it in an age when even stranger real-life stories are a mouse click away.
“We never took any of it that seriously,” Calder said. “It was never meant to be journalism in the normal sense. Maybe that’s why it was as successful as it was.”
