History
The WWN was launched in 1979 by publisher Generoso Pope, Jr. as a means to continue using the black and white press that the higher-profile tabloid, The National Enquirer, had been printed on, when the sister publication switched to color printing. Like many supermarket weeklies in the U.S., the Weekly World News was published in Lantana, Florida, until it moved to Boca Raton in the late 1990s. It was unique as a tabloid because it was printed entirely in black and white.
Its longtime editor, Eddie Clontz, a 10th-grade dropout from North Carolina and former copy editor at small newspapers, joined the paper in 1981. In the 1980s, the circulation of WWN peaked at 1.2 million per issue.
In 1999, David Pecker bought American Media Inc., which owned the Weekly World News. Within the next two years, many of WWN's longtime writers and editors, including Clontz, Sal Ivone, Derek Clontz, Susan Jimison, Joe Berger, Bob Lind, Dick Kulpa and Leskie Pinson, were gone. Clontz left the paper in 2001, having been there 20 years, and died in 2004.
In a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2007, American Media said that sales of WWN in 2006 were only 83,000 per issue.
WWN ceased its print publication in 2007. It is currently being published as an insert within Sun magazine, with new material being printed alongside articles and columns from older issues. It maintains a website that is updated daily.
In October 2008, Bat Boy L.L.C., a company started by Neil McGinness, bought WWN. The company has plans to revamp the website and is considering printing it again as a standalone publication.
In January 2011, the Weekly World News made available to fans an online paid subscription. This online edition is emailed to subscribers bi-weekly. The format of the online edition is classic Weekly World News right down to the old Weekly World News logo used from 1979 to 2001. The stories are classic Weekly World News, for example the first issue's headline screamed, "Werewolf Sues Airline Over Flight Delay."
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