Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992 TAG: 9201090544
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSH LEMIEUX ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Medium
THIS IS WEIRD STUFF, - BUT TRUE
Did you hear about the nearly blind motorist who trained his guide dog in the passenger seat to bark when other cars get too close?How about the guy who didn't notice he was shot in the face until the bullet was seen in an X-ray three days later? Police believe the man was shot while asleep; they found a note in his kitchen saying, "Bill, you've been shot. Call 911."
Weird stuff? You bet. And as far as Chuck Shepherd is concerned, the weirder the better.
In his "News of the Weird" column, the 46-year-old George Washington University law professor culls items from legitimate news publications to prove his theory that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.
"I don't think that true stories need to be embellished," he said by telephone from his Washington office.
Shepherd began collecting the strange-but-true items a decade ago. He included favorites in a newsletter he sent to friends. They, in turn, began sharing odd stories with him.
The Washington City Paper, a alternative weekly in the nation's capital, began publishing parts of Shepherd's newsletter in 1988. National syndication soon followed through Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, and today "News of the Weird" appears in about 150 publications nationwide.
Shepherd hears from about 100 contributors a week and choses 13 to 15 of their offerings for his weekly column.
Some people have made it into Shepherd's column by being stupid, like the the teen-ager who shot himself to "see how it felt."
Others make the column for being clever, such as the inmate who won his release by calling his jailers from a telephone in the same Florida facility. He impersonated an Alaska prison official, saying it would be too much trouble to extradite him to Alaska.
Shepherd's goal is to share with readers the strangeness of the world, not necessarily give them a comprehensive story.
"A regular journalist, I suppose, is under greater obligation of fairness," said Shepherd.
For example, if Shepherd reports on a judge's weird ruling, he sees no need to mention that a higher court overturned the decision - unless, of course, the higher court also did something weird.
Shepherd, who specializes in libel law, said he's never been sued by people whose deeds have earned them ink in his column.
And he said that tabloid TV shows seem to have created a real demand for the kind of weird news he writes about.
"I suppose that the weirdness has been a constant throughout history," he said, "but editors today are more comfortable about it."