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YOU can profit from tabloid chaos!

grant

21:11 / 22.11.04

Item: My immediate boss, the guy running the Weekly World News and the Sun, was fired on Friday. The guy he was filling in for, who got fired a couple months ago, is now back on a temp/part time basis. If you can get your hands on a copy of the already-printed, now-recalled "Saddam Hussein Castrated in Jail" WWN issue, it might be worth something. I think it's the only WWN *ever* to be recalled.

Item: The Sun is now looking for content like crazy. I've been asked to find someone who can write a weekly non-denominational, spiritually uplifting sermon/essay. Something that will warm the cockles of fundamentalists' hearts while also making Jewish readers nod their heads in sage agreement. $100 a week. We'll call you a minister if you like (if you're not one already, just go to the Universal Life Church website; it's good enough for tabloid credentials). Any takers?

grant

21:18 / 22.11.04

And if you need to be told, this gig would be a memetic hotline into the sick, frenzied heart of Red State America.

Mazarine

21:23 / 22.11.04

Wasn't your immediate boss bugging you? Is this a schadenfreude moment, or a sympathy moment?

I do fire and brimstone pretty well (it's genetic), but I'm not sure if I can appeal to all denominations. What length are we generally talking?

Bed Head

21:33 / 22.11.04

Oh. My. God. The Sally Dammerung column. I’d so read that.

lekvar

22:08 / 22.11.04

As if I needed another reason to read the WWN. Bonus points for "Elder Gods" references.

grant

14:43 / 23.11.04

We're talking 10-12 column inches, so between 275-300 words or so.

Fire and brimstone isn't *exactly* right, depending on how it's done. It's part of the "Sunshine Club" pages, this new thing that will have a couple stories of ordinary heroism (people donating kidneys to strangers, saving drowning kittens, that sort of thing) and this spiritually uplifting religious column. The former/fired/rehired-as-temporary editor-in-chief said, "A Unitarian minister or something like that would be perfect."

It's not in the WWN, but in Sun. The guy who invented Ed Anger is slated to take WWN's reins back, so it should be getting pretty good again. No schadenfreude for this departure -- I got along with the boss, he was a reasonable, logical guy with wonderful facial hair and a fascination with Nietzsche.

Liger Null

15:06 / 23.11.04

Grant, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that you work for the Sun.

electric monk

15:18 / 23.11.04

OMFG! I definitely want a crack at this. Something around 300 words...uplifting...call me Reverend...I'm giddy.

What's your timeline on this? Send material in ASAP?

grant

15:30 / 23.11.04

The Sun I work for is not the London Sun, but the American tabloid. The one with the anthrax, not the one with the Page 3 Girl.

PM me a link to what you got -- I've asked folks on other boards about this too, so there's competition.

Oh, and this is Thanksgiving week, so I'm going to be in Coconino (no lie -- Payson, Arizona is right were Krazy & Ignatz lived) from Wed to Sun.

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