In a bizarre world ...

Now that the traditional newspaper business model has become obsolete, apparently internet newspapers' main challenge is to fill the space between the advertisements. It does not matter how, in fact there seems to be a distinction between 'low-cost' news and news with value which can be offered in the printed press or behind paid access.
The 'low-cost' or copy-paste news is identical in most newspapers, which are obviously generated automatically.

Especially popular are the sections of 'bizarre', 'weird' or 'fun' news. Is this genuine news, or pure fiction for marketing purposes? Take the following article:

Belgian couple headed for Lourdes arrives in ... Loudes
A Belgian couple that wanted to visit the image of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, did not arrive in the pilgrimage site in the French Pyrenees, but in the town Loudes, according to the French magazine La Montagne. Loudes is situated in the also picturesque Haute-Loire and, like Lourdes, in France, but a few hundred kilometers from the place where Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary half a century ago.

The Belgians did have a GPS in their car. Unfortunately they had typed in "Loudes' instead of 'Lourdes'.

Source: HLN.be (http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/959/Bizar/article/detail/1472833/2012/07/19/Belgisch-koppel-op-weg-naar-Lourdes-belandt-in-Loudes.dhtml) and La Montagne (http://www.lamontagne.fr/auvergne/actualite/2012/07/19/en-route-pour-lourdes-un-couple-de-belges-se-retrouve-a-loudes-1224910.html).

Strange. Even if this were interesting or 'fun', who made this story? Did the Belgians call the newspaper, or a Loudes policeman? Was there a reporter involved, or do we just submit our weird and fun stories through the newspaper websites?

So far, 134.342 people liked this story on Facebook. In a bizarre world where we no longer understand who took our money, we stay informed through random weird stories, that may be true, or just fun.