It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's...Bat Boy?

Bread, milk, butter. . .fake news tabloid? If your weekly shopping routine used to include the out-of-print Weekly World News - famous for such wacky content as alien/celebrity weddings and ominous pictures of the devil's face in smoke plumes - you might have reason to celebrate. WWN stopped printing in 2007 after circulation fell from a high of 1.2 million to below 90,000. A new owner, Bat Boy L.L.C., recently bought the publication and plans to revive it on both the Web and in print. There's even talk of licensing notable recurring headline-grabbing characters, such as the half-breed Bat Boy, for toy figures and movie deals.

It's the End of the World as We Know It...

Well, we knew the day would come when a major newspaper folded up the tent and decided to do away with its daily print edition in favor of the...ugh...Internet. I had just hoped it wouldn't come in my lifetime. The Christian Science Monitor just announced that it is taking the big leap o' faith. Personally, I hope they crash and burn. It's still my strong belief that folks want a physical paper to buy, hold, read and tape to the refrigerator. I also don't think the advertising is there to support online. But, as we all know, the newspaper industry has made so many smart decisions in the past five years, so maybe they are on target. Tell it to my stockbroker, who has watched my McClatchy stock go from $46.50 to $2.50 a share in less than two years. As much as I don't mind reading some news online, I don't want it to be my primary source of information. Wait. Sorry. We're all watching TV nowadays anyway. Nevermind. Do what you want. It doesn't matter anymore. Go here, if you care, to get the sordid details (and their attempt at an explanation):

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1029/p25s01-usgn.html