Elvis lives, mutants are taking over, UFOs are landing and Hillary Clinton is definitely divorcing Bill.
But you're going to have to pay up to learn any more than that.
Weekly World News — the supermarket tabloid which once drew in readers at the check-out line with its flashy, if far-fetched, headlines — plans to announce a paywall on Thursday, though it's unclear when the subscription requirement will go up.
Paywalls have shown moderate success for big-name newspapers in recent years, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. But the News, largely overshadowed by gossip sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton and by the satirists at the Onion, may have a hard time convincing people to pay to see half-boy-half-bat mutants.
The site receives about 2.4 million monthly visitors, according to Quantcast.
The tabloid, which ended its print edition in 2007 and switched to online-only, has partnered with Los Angeles-based MediaPass to build the paywall. In 2008, it was sold to former National Lampoon executive Neil McGinness, who now runs Bat Boy LLC, the News's parent company.
"MediaPass is the best paywall solution on the market by far, and the most experienced
at subscription monetization," McGinness said in a statement. "We are extremely excited about the growing revenue opportunity with them as a partner for our digital subscriptions."
