Cute (but fake) news stories

Recently someone reminded me of an old tabloid I used to read, and for some reason I feel like sharing a trip down memory lane.

Back in the day there was tabloid called "Weekly World News" where 98% of the articles were clearly faked. And some of those fakes were on topic for this board. Seriously, they usually had one or two spanking references per issue.

For example, if you head to https://www.google.ca/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=spank&tbs=,bkt:m,bkms:116868410330264403 4
http://books.google.ca/books? you'll find someone writing in for advice on how to deal with a boy she babysits for - because he likes it when she spanks him.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=1vMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA23&dq=spank&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kSdrUZXxM _Xi4AOD7IFo&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=spank&f=false
Lists countless spanking stories - including recycled ones.

Goodgulf

I remember that tabloid. There were a couple columnists who talked about spanking, someone calling himself Ed Anger(think an even nastier Rush Limbaugh in terms of political viewpoint) and a Dear Abby type column called Ask Dotty, or Dear Dotty.
But at some point seemed to have stopped with spanking stuff.

I often wondered about that and similar tabloids. How/why did they sell enough copies to survive? How many times could the real whereabouts of the resurrected and/or still-alive Elvis be revealed? How many perfectly preserved baby aliens can be found in discarded spaceships?

Surely the purchasers couldn't really have believed what they were reading? ...so what was the attraction?

More importantly, what was it that displaced the need for them in our society? ...and did it so thoroughly that the old tabloids disappeared from our supermarket checkout lanes? (Did it have something to do with the Internet? Were they replaced by Fox News?)