February 3, 2004
Eddie Clontz died last week. You probably have no clue who I am talking about -- to be honest, I didn't recognize his name before I read the obituaries. But chances are, you know his work.
Clontz was the longtime editor of the Weekly World News. Yes, THAT Weekly World News, the black-and-white tabloid newspaper available at supermarket checkstands across the country. This is the newspaper that made "Bat Boy" -- a part-bat, part boy being -- into a cottage industry. The newspaper that reported the various exploits of "alive" Elvis for years. You may recall that, in 1993, they killed him off --and a few weeks later, brought him back to life, claiming it had only been a hoax.
According to an Associated Press story, he went to work for the Weekly World News in 1981, and stayed there until about three years ago. His death last week, at the age of 56, was reportedly from complications of diabetes.
All my life, I have been a huge fan of the Weekly World News. This all started because of my grandmother. Every night while I was growing up, my parents and I would go to my grandparents' house, which is just down the road from my parents' house in Steamboat, just south of Reno. While my parents chatted with my grandmother and grandfather, I'd read the Weekly World News to pass the time. My grandmother had a subscription -- she still does, I think -- which is frightening, considering that she's long had a tendency to believe EVERYTHING she reads in the newspapers. "They couldn't print it if it were true," she would say. For years, I tried to convince her this was not the case; she wouldn't believe me, even after I graduated from college and became a newspaper editor myself.
Seeing that Grandma apparently believed this stuff, she must have had a warped view of the world. Clontz's newspaper reported on the discovery of Atlantis. The "fact" that several U.S. Senators were actually aliens. That an alien endorsed George W. Bush for president. And it made interpretations of Nostradamus' supposed predictions a quasi-regular feature.
To put it simply: The Weekly World News was full of bullshit. Hilarious, entertaining and sometimes oddly poignant bullshit. But bullshit nonetheless. And I loved every bit of it. Week in and week out, The Weekly World News was -- and is -- an amazing read.
It's amazing how many journalists -- real, respected, esteemed journalists -- adore the Weekly World News. These journalists don't emulate the newspaper in their work, my goodness, but they adore it nonetheless. My good friend and colleague, Deidre Pike, of the Reno News & Review, has been known to clip stories from the paper and post them around her desk.
And Deidre's not alone. After Clontz' death last week, his passing was eulogized by a number of well-known writers. One of the best remembrances came from Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post humor writer (best known around these parts as the guy who declared Battle Mountain to be "The Armpit of America"). In his article, "Aliens Beam Tabloid Editor To Heaven," published in the Jan. 29 edition of the Post, he wrote about the time that he and Dave Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist at the Miami Herald, turned Clontz on to a story: The aforementioned death of Elvis in 1993. Weingarten wrote about how he and Barry tipped off Clontz to Elvis' death, from a heart attack. The tip was based not on any facts or even rumors, but simply on the belief of Weingarten and Barry that it would make a HILARIOUS story. As Weingarten wrote:
"I'm sure he put his best people on it. Weeks went by. But sure enough, the story finally hit the stands: ELVIS DEAD AT 58. It was a huge scoop. WWN donated six pages to it, with many sidebars. Of course, some weeks later WWN exclusively disclosed that prior reports of Elvis' death had been a hoax. And it was back in the Elvis business."
As a legit journalist, it's hard not to envy Clontz. While we were out there doing our best to make things like city government and school-board meetings interesting, Clontz got to just make it up, telling good, creative stories and having a blast.
Weingarten put it best: "I think every American journalist, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward, secretly envied Eddie Clontz. I know I did. Here was a man who simply refused, as a matter of principle, to allow truth to get in the way of a great story."
Amen, bro.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and copy edit a story about municipal trash fees. Sigh ...
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan in exile in Arizona. His column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.