UnNews:UnNews's only rival goes bust

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

2 November 2010

The reading public is left wondering where to turn for steady misinformation.

BOCA RATON, Florida -- American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, is days away from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy -- a move that would temporarily leave UnNews with a monopoly in the dissemination of factually questionable news.

Most of the company's bondholders support the move, a "packaged bankruptcy" that would let the company reorganize, under court approval, and probably bust up its union.

The scandal-sheet broke the scandals involving John Edwards and Bill Clinton. "Unfortunately," says Morris Greeley, executive publisher of UnNews, "these stories were ultimately revealed to be true. That was the start of the Enquirer's downfall." The rag had to go further afield, relying on stories of space aliens in the Congress, their inhuman bodies wielding oversize gavels, and rodent pieces in boxes of popular breakfast cereal--stories that had little risk of being true, but even less risk of being read.

In addition, technology has conspired to drive more news hounds to the Internet--that is, to UnNews. A dozen newspapers have gone tits-up (to use the technical term) since December 2008, weighed down by debt taken on in better times. Oddly, none of these media powerhouses was declared "too big to fail."

Mr. Greeley promises that UnNews will not abuse its monopoly position. The service has been slow since undergoing its own involuntary reorganization in September, but Mr. Greeley denies that the delays are caused by the service retrieving the credit card numbers of readers to determine how willing and able they might be to pay for the content.

Sources

• Staff, "Enquirer’s owner bankrupt" Associated Press, November 2, 2010