Weekly World News - General Approach To Stories

General Approach To Stories

The WWN traditionally claimed that it always printed the truth (typical slogan: "Nothing but the truth: The Weekly World News!"). Many stories, however, appeared to have comedic intent. Confirming this, in Batboy Lives! a semi-serious introduction admitted that while Reader A reads the tabloid for real news, Reader B will read it for laughs. While the tabloid's main rival, Sun, carried a fine print disclaimer, the WWN never publicly questioned the accuracy of its own stories until 2004, when the paper began stating that "the reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment". In recent years, Sun moved more toward articles on health, and miracle cures, mostly leaving WWN alone in its unique niche of basing a weekly publication almost entirely on 'news' that the traditional media dared not report, such as sightings of Elvis Presley and the Loch Ness monster. Today, Sun publishes a small WWN insert as "bonus pages" within its weekly magazine.

On occasion, it ran strange-but-true stories, such as "DEVOUT CHRISTIAN ATTACKED — AND HE'S THE ONE FINED!" referring to conservative English street preacher Harry Hammond being fined after he was threatened by "homosexual liberals." Other verifiable stories included, but were not limited to, those of a giant mutant hog monster attacking Georgia, and the arrest of a Tallahassee, FL man whose pants were on fire at the time. It reported on the discovery of an infant dragon preserved in formaldehyde proving the existence of dragons, although this was later proven to be a hoax. It also quoted Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth on Pope John Paul II's battles with Satan, and ran a story on the copyright dispute between O, The Oprah Magazine and a German erotic periodical, also named "O."

However, these stories were the exceptions. When most of the supermarket tabloids were acquired by Fleet Street publishers, they switched to celebrity gossip, but the Weekly World News remained devoted to weirdness. In the introduction to Batboy Lives! Sal Ivone, former managing editor, said, "If someone calls me up and says their toaster is talking to them, I don't refer them to professional help, I say, 'Put the toaster on the phone'." Derrik Lang, a former stringer for the paper, said, "That fat guy with the sunburned belly and that kid abused by his own shadow were living, breathing people with wilder-than-wild stories to tell — in my head. I can't attest to the entire publication, but everything in my stories was fake — you know, depending on how you define fake."

WWN was a journalistic leader in following the progress of Bat Boy, the half-bat, half-boy superhero; and P'lod, an extraterrestrial who became involved in Earth politics and had an affair with Hillary Clinton. Other important issues regularly reported on included the oncoming great depression/apocalypse, and newly found lost prophecies.

WWN was also in the forefront of informing the public about alien abductions, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and time travel. WWN once carried a story about inhabitants of the planet Mercury who had proposed to establish a colony in San Francisco — presumably they sought a more temperate climate, where lead was generally a solid. (In one of the latest, Iraq was revealed to possess a "time tunnel" capable of facilitating time travel.)

Occasionally, stories published in the Weekly World News sent shock waves through the legal and law enforcement communities. For example, in early 1989, WWN published startling photographs on the front page of executed serial killer Ted Bundy on the autopsy table. Electrode burns on Bundy's shaved head with his fixed and dilated pupils staring into space could clearly be seen in the photographs. Angry and surprised officials in Florida vowed to catch the person responsible. Eventually, a low-level employee of the Alachua County, Florida Medical Examiners office was arrested and charged with taking and selling the photographs.