Word: tabloidism
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...News That Was Fit to Fake I am happy to see that such a highbrow publication deigned to write about the passing of the Weekly World News, a tabloid that will truly be missed by Americans stuck in the checkout line [Aug. 27]. But I disagree with Joel Stein's claim that it's "a sign of progress for a society to go from inventing gods and monsters to seeking catharsis in the real life of Paris Hilton." That's as laughable as Bat Boy running for President. The Weekly World News lost readers because people turned to the Internet...
...Clontz pushed the tabloid tactic of exaggeration into distortion and then outright invention. No need for qualifying clauses on an implausible story; at WWN, innuendo went out the window. For the editors, Photoshop was their AP picture bank. For the writers, a wild imagination was their reporter's notebook. Other newsmen might be held to a two-source minimum; the WWN staff strictly adhered to a no-source minimum...
...Tabloid readers, like the rest of us, want to live forever with no effort, and WWN playfully pandered to their wishes. Among the self-help headlines...
...gauge WWN's influence across the media, consider that it's the only tabloid newspaper to have inspired two terrific musicals. The first was David Byrne's 1986 movie True Stories, which shows two guys in a laughing fit over a WWN headline ("Starving Peasants Sell Their Blood to Vampires for Blood Money") and features a character called the Lying Woman, whose claims of being involved in every imaginable sexual, political and extraterrestrial scandal echo many a WWN story...
...happy to see that such a highbrow publication deigned to write about the passing of the Weekly World News, a tabloid that will truly be missed by individuals stuck in the checkout line [Aug. 27]. But I disagree with Joel Stein's claim that it's "a sign of progress for a society to go from inventing gods and monsters to seeking catharsis in the real life of Paris Hilton." That's as laughable as Bat Boy running for President. The Weekly World News lost readers because people turned to the Internet. Instead of waiting for a weekly paper...