The World’s Worst

newspaper turns 30

WHEN you start out claiming to be the World Worst Newspaper, there

is no place to go but up. At least some would think so. The World’s Worst claim came into popular usage at the Marshall Islands Journal in 1994, a response to the New York Times publishing a photo of a prominent Marshall Islands elected official as a kid dressed in nothing but his birthday suit, a photo it had been expressly requested not to use - an action for which Journal publisher Joe Murphy, took the high and mighty Times to task in a biting letter, in which he said I the Times should recognise that no matter how low its stan- \ dard of journalism sunk, it still \ V could not compete with the \ Journal, the World’s Worst. \ From that day on, the World’s \ Worst label stuck and prospered. \ Soon, bumper stickers and T-shirts \ with the Journal’s masthead advertised the World’s Worst.

A Boston Globe feature writer did a search for the World’s Worst, calling us to send copies of the paper for his review.

He later concluded in print that the Journal did not come near to qualifying for the title, an opinion the Journal staff hotly dispute, believing that he must have read the wrong issues of the paper.

“No one would mistake the Journal for a buttoned-down business rag,” wrote Alex Salkever in Continental

Micronesia’s inflight magazine, Pacifica.

Next to a graphic of a

dead fish wrapped in a copy of the Journal, Salkever wrote: “Pick up any issue, and you’ll be greeted by brilliant media insights such as ‘Pizza is Fattening’ or ‘Please Don’t Rob Banks.’

In addition, a regular standout is the risque Around Town column, which covers the wacky, the seamy and the uncouth - to , the chagrin of those on the receiving end of \ barbs but to the delight of most of the pop-

V ulace.”

tO I V Still, for a paper that advertises itself \ way, the Journal has a heavyweight audience. Each week, the paper cross \ es desks of key officials in the US ' \ Departments of State, Interior and y Defense in Washington, and more \ than a few US Congressional \ offices. And for many Marshall y Islanders it is the only non-gov \ eminent source of news avail \ a ble. It’s likely that the y Journal, which has been the

\ Marshalls’only newspaper

) for 30 years, is going to get some competition in 1999 - from the government, which recently appropriated $104,000 for a publication and apparently intends to show that the Journal is, indeed, the World’s Worst. ■