GalleyCat readers Keely Done, Michael Dudding, and Russ Gooberman each won a free copy of Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed for sharing their personal sightings of the Weekly World News‘ hero, Bat Boy.
Do supermarket newspapers like Weekly World News have any place in the digital future? To celebrate the contest, we interviewed Dr. Barry Leed, author of Going Mutant.
He shared great hope for tabloid newsprint: “Well, let us boldly predict here and now, yes, you read it here first on this website, that the death of the newsstand has been largely exaggerated. Glossy four colors like Gourmet Magazine had it coming but good old fashioned newsprint has never been cheaper. We’re not about to start printing in color or do anything crazy like that but we are irrationally exuberant about the future of print. Keep your eyes peeled at checkout!”
Leed continued: “If you can’t find us there, check out [our Facebook page]. Over 40,000 people are doing it and we think somewhere around 27,000 of those may actually be human.”
He concluded: “The Weekly World News has protected civilians from alien slime since 1979. We don’t expect that will change much in the coming years though we are trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and other media forms like musicals. Sure, we’ve got big shot hollywood writers doing a television show right now but we’re not that into stretch white limos. We keep our feet firmly planted in the ground with our eyes on the sky. We think of our mission in Kermit The Frog lyrics: ‘What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing? / And what do we think we might see? / Someday we’ll find it….'”