Wednesday, July 25, 2007

"The Only Newspaper Brave Enough To Tell The Truth" Closes it's Doors

One of my absolutely favorite newspaper, the Weekly World News, is closing it’s doors after almost 30 years. I loved this rag, simply because a) it was so silly and b) I knew one of the guys who wrote Ed Anger.

My all time favorite story was “Moon Is Giant Space Creature’s Skull”, but I can’t find an online reference to it.

My Technical Writing instructor at Penn State had a side job writing the Ed Anger column for awhile in the late 80’s, which was a lot of fun. Tom was actually one of the best teachers I ever had, giving us very clear directions on how to breakdown writing, data presentation and logic very clearly to get to the point, training I still use to this very day. We asked him once how he wrote the Ed Anger column,

“Well, first I start drinking… then I call a friend and start talking. We try to think of 3 unrelated things, then link them together. For example, the other night we came up with Arabs, the Olympics and transsexuals. We then link them together in headline form, hence: Cheating Towelheads Stole Our Gold Medals! The rest just writes itself…”

I, for one, will miss it..

Select articles from the WWN

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