The World News Times has officially stopped the presses after its cash reserves ran dry, unable to attract new investors to the mortally wounded company. Long the target of critics, World News had defended front page headlines such as World’s Fattest Baby Alien Performs Liposuction on Rosie O’Donnell and Oprah Caught Sleeping With Godzilla at Graceland. But these seemingly absurd, wildly fictitious stories – like so many others published in the World News since it was founded in 1927 – have been discovered not to be untrue at all.

A veritable army of fact checkers and researches, sworn to silence, had produced mountains of documentation supporting each and every bold claim printed in the World News. The operation, kept clandestine deep inside a Nevada mountain, was scooped out of secrecy by a reporter for the competing Daily News Express who had intended to fabricate the story before discovering that it was real.

Arthur Feldshuh, publisher of the World News Times, confessed to company shareholders that the allegations were indeed based on fact. “Fact,” he announced, “not unlike those behind every story we have published, I am sad to say. Certifiable, verifiable, documented facts.” In an emotional speech, Feldshuh explained that his paper did not at first intend to print factually accurate stories. “We never planned to research anything…it just happened somehow. It became part of the culture of the organization.” When news first broke, Feldshuh had promised to find and weed out those behind the years of accurate fact checking, but investor confidence was too shaken to recover.

With the World News Times shut down, Feldshuh doesn’t see a relaunch in the near future. “As a sensational tabloid in people’s eyes, our credibility is shot.” Instead, Feldshuh hopes to reorganize the company’s printing operations under a new publication. “We’re thinking of an encyclopedia.”