WORLD WEEKLY NEWS

I loved the Washington Post eulogy for the soon-to-be-departed World Weekly News. Especially this quote:

"Mainstream journalists read WWN and dreamed about killing the county sewer-system story they were working on and writing about a swamp monster or a 65-pound grasshopper," says Derek Clontz, who was a Weekly World News editor for 15 years.

What can I say? It's true. Wouldn't a session of the state Legislature be a little more lively if we could throw in some stories about the Mole People living secretly beneath the Round House or reveal that Ben Lujan actually is Elvis Presley living under a new identity?

The bad thing about the WWN is that every time I'd pick up one up in line at the grocery store to check out some crazy story, someone -- sometimes a friend, sometimes a complete stranger -- would suddenly appear to rib me: "So THIS is where you get all your stories ..."

Back in the late '80s or early '90s I actually got to write an article for The New Mexican based on a WWN cover story. It was something about an underground UFO base in northern New Mexico revealed. This was based on a speech given by some "expert." I actually tracked down the guy and it turned out he was pig-biting mad at the WWN for that story. He indeed had given a speech, but he had mentioned the New Mexico base in a disparaging way. He believed in some other theory of UFOs and looked down on those who believed in the New Mexico base.

Yes, I was disappointed.

Better go. have to check out a story about zombies running a slate of candidates in Taos County.