From the Salon blurb for the story by Stan Sinberg: For three years, I "reported" on Elvis and aliens for the Weekly World News. Now it's published its last issue. The checkout aisle -- and my career -- will never be the same.

From the article: (free with a day pass)

When I heard that the Weekly World News was suspending publication after 28 years with its Aug. 27 issue, I hoped that the story was as true as the stories in the paper itself, the ones about Elvis and Bigfoot and Bat Boy and the rap artist who had "reverse Tourette's syndrome," which forced him to say something nice every time he tried to curse. That is, not true.

My interest went beyond being a faithful reader: The Weekly World News was my livelihood. I wrote a lot of those stories.

For three years, under various pseudonyms (including Jake Anderson -- a play on Jack Anderson, the great muckraker of my youth), I "reported" that the real reason for global warming was that teenage space aliens were stealing our glaciers for party ice, that the judicial system was in chaos because a thief stole "the book" that judges throw at them, that leftovers from the Last Supper were found in a man's fridge, and that a man who killed a fly was arrested for "pesticide" (the police chief chided, "That's why we have a SWAT team"). And several hundred more "scoops."

Here's how Sinberg got started:

Long before I wrote for them, I wondered how the staff came up with their nutty concepts. I imagined that the "newsroom" had a dartboard consisting of subjects (Bigfoot, aliens, Elvis, hookers, etc.), verbs (invades, marries, kidnaps, discovers) and objects (see "subjects"). Three darts later, you had your story.

Then one day I spotted an online ad from WWN seeking new "reporters." I wrote back that I was thrilled at the opportunity, because who else would tell me that Hillary was dating a space alien? I further mentioned that the "mainstream" media always censored my best scoops like "Man Doesn't Stop for a Red Light in 30 Years, and Never Has an Accident or Gets a Ticket." The editors asked me to send in that story as a sample, and I was off and running. ...

Once I was "in," I often described my job, without a hint of exaggeration, as "thinking of the stupidest shit possible." I once pitched a story positing that the U.S. government had data confirming that the one commonality linking all mass killers, including the Columbine shooters, was that they never masturbated. Rather than issue this report, which would save lives but promote onanism, the government preferred to let occasional slaughters take place. My editor rejected it on the grounds that it was "too plausible."

Because WWN didn't engage in trash-talking celebrities (with the exception of Elvis) the way the National Enquirer does, Sinberg said he considered it a "higher calling."

But psychic and "magic dot" ads don't pay top advertising rates and more and more celebrity tabloids battled WWN for valuable rack space. WWN might have repositioned itself and gone after the ironic Onion crowd. It could have made itself "cool" to read, not "weird." But odd and myopic to the last, WWN failed to adapt to a changing demographic. And so, for now -- while the Web site lives -- the supermarket checkout line will be an emptier, less imaginative place.