USA Today
(trademarked as USA TODAY in capitals) is a national
American
daily
newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by
Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with the
Wall Street Journal for the
position of having the widest
circulation of any newspaper in the
United States, something it previously held since 2003. According
to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper has 1.9 million
copies as of October 2009 compared to the Wall Street Journal's 2.1
million though this figure includes the WSJ's 400,000 paid for,
online subscribers. USA Today remains the widest circulated print
newspaper in the United States.
USA Today is distributed in all
fifty states, Canada
, the
District of
Columbia
, Puerto Rico, and
Guam
. The newspaper has its headquarters in
Tysons
Corner
, unincorporated
Fairfax County,
Virginia
.
Overview
USA Today was founded in 1982 with the goal of providing a
national newspaper in the U.S. market, where generally only a
single local newspaper and/or a metropolitan daily's state/regional
edition was available. The first issue reported on the death of
actress
Grace Kelly. Colorful and bold,
with many large
diagrams,
charts, and
photographs, it
contrasted with the relatively colorless papers of the time such as
The Wall Street
Journal and
The New York
Times. Emphasizing its national focus,
USA Today
became well-known for its national
polls on public sentiment. Another distinctive
feature is its "Our View/Opposing View" editorial column, which
features not only the paper's view on a current event, but also
features the view of someone (individual or group) defending the
opposing view.
The concept of a colorful newspaper with national distribution was
considered at the paper's launch to be a risk, and the paper
received early criticism, receiving the derisive nickname "
McPaper". However, the newspaper has striven to set
itself apart in distribution methods as well. The paper is still
sold in unique newspaper vending machines with curved edges that
resemble
television sets.
USA
Today was also eager to latch onto the business traveler and
was heavily distributed through airlines, airports, and hotels in
addition to other sales outlets. The newspaper was also among the
first newspapers to use
satellite
transmissions to send the final edition of the newspaper to
multiple locations across the country for printing and final
distribution in those regional markets. The innovation of using
satellites and regional
printing hubs
allowed the paper to push back deadlines and include the most
recent news and sports scores in each edition.
In 2001,
the newspaper moved into its new 30 acre (120,000 m²)
headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a Washington, D.C.
, suburb. Its original
headquarters, the old
USA Today and Gannett, Inc.
"silver
towers", are located in the neighborhood of Rosslyn
and are a
major landmark on the Washington skyline.
The newspaper's motto, appearing on the top and bottom levels, is
The Nation's Newspaper - #1 in the USA.
USA Today is the fourth-largest English language newspaper , behind
the Sun (Britain), Daily Mail (Britain) and The Times of
India.
Layout and format
USA Today is known for synthesizing news down to
easy-to-read-and-comprehend stories.
In the main edition
seen in the United States and some Canadian
cities, each
edition consists of four sections: News (the oft-labeled "front
page" section), Money, Sports, and Life. On Fridays, two
Life sections are included: the regular Life for entertainment
(subtitled
Weekend; section E), which features
television, a DVD column,
film reviews and trends, and a travel
supplement called
Destinations & Diversions (section
D). The international edition of the paper features News and Money
and Sports and Life combined into two sections.
The paper does not print on Saturdays and Sundays.
USA
Today prints each complete story on the front page of the
respective section with exception to the cover story. The cover
story is a longer story that requires a jump (readers must turn to
another page in the paper to complete the story, usually the very
next page, page 2 of that section). On certain days, the news or
sports section will take up two paper sections, and there will be a
second cover story within the second section.
Each section is denoted by a certain color to differentiate
sections beyond lettering and is seen in a box the top-left corner
of the first page, with News being
blue
(section A), Money with
green (section B),
red for Sports (section C), and
purple for Life (section D).
Orange is used for bonus sections (section E
or above), which are published occasionally such as for business travel trends and the Olympics; other bonus sections for sports (such as
for the PGA Tour preview, NCAA Basketball Tournaments,
Memorial Day auto races (Indianapolis
500
and Coca-Cola 600),
NFL opening weekend and the
Super Bowl) previously used the orange
color, but now use the sports red in their bonus sections.
On days featuring bonus sections or business holidays (when the
four pages of stock tables are unneeded), the Money and Life
sections are usually combined into one section, while combinations
of the Friday Life editions into one section are common during
quiet weeks.
In many ways,
USA Today is set up to break the typical
newspaper layout. Some examples of that divergence from tradition
include using the left-hand quarter of each section as reefers,
sometimes using sentence-length blurbs to describe stories inside.
It is also the only paper in the United States to utilize the
Gulliver
font, which is used for both
headlines and stories. Being a national newspaper,
USA
Today cannot focus on the weather for any one city. Therefore,
the entire back page of the News section is used for weather maps
and temperature lists for the entire United States and many cities
throughout the world, with data provided by
Weather Channel meteorologists. In the
bottom left-hand corner of the weather page is a graphic called
"Weather Focus," which explains different meteorological phenomena.
On Mondays, the Money section uses its back page to present an
unusual graphic depicting the performance of various industry
groups as a function of quarterly, monthly and weekly movements
against the
S&P 500.
Book coverage, including reviews and a national sales chart is seen
on Thursdays in Life, with the official full
A.C. Nielsen
television ratings chart printed
on Wednesdays or Thursdays, depending on release. The paper also
publishes the
Mediabase survey for several
genres of music, based on radio airplay spins on Tuesdays, along
with their own chart of the top ten singles in general on
Wednesdays.
Advertising coverage is seen
in the Monday Money section, which often includes a review of a
current television ad, and after
Super
Bowl Sunday, a review of the ads aired during the broadcast
with the results of the
Ad Track live survey.
One of the staples of the News section is a state-by-state roundup
of headlines.
The summaries consist of paragraph-length
Associated Press reports
highlighting one story of note in each state, the District of
Columbia, and one U.S. territory.
Some traditions have been retained, however. The
lead story still appears on the upper-right hand
of the front page. Commentary and political cartoons occupy the
last few pages of the News section. Stock and mutual fund data are
presented in the Money section. But
USA Today is
sufficiently different in aesthetics to be recognized on sight,
even in a mix of other newspapers, such as at a newsstand. The
overall design and layout of
USA Today has been described
as both neo-Victorian and
Impressionist.
Also, in most of the sections' front pages, on the lower left hand
corner, are "USA Today Snapshots", which give statistics of various
lifestyle interests according to the section it is in (for example,
a snapshot in "Life" could show how many people tend to watch a
certain genre of television show based upon the type of mood they
are in at the time). These "Snapshots" are shown through graphs
which are made up of various illustrations of objects that roughly
pertain to the graphs subject matter (using the example above, the
graph's bars could be made up of several TV sets, or ended by one).
These are usually loosely based on research by a national institute
(with the source in the box below the graph in fine print to show
credit).
Starting in February 2008, the newspaper added a magazine
supplement called
Open Air,
appearing several times a year.
Controversial incidents
In 1988,
Arthur Ashe discovered he had
contracted HIV during the blood transfusions he had received during
one of his two heart surgeries. He and his wife kept his illness
private until April 8, 1992, when reports that the newspaper
USA Today was about to publish a story about his condition
forced him to make a public announcement that he had the
disease.
In March
2004, the newspaper was hit by a major
scandal when it was revealed that
Jack
Kelley, a long-time
USA Today correspondent and
nominee for the
Pulitzer Prize, had
been fabricating stories.
The newspaper did an extensive review of
Kelley's stories, including sending investigators to Cuba
, Israel
and Jordan
, and sifting
through stacks of hotel record to determine
if Kelley was in the locations he claimed to be filing stories
from. Kelley resigned, but denied the charges. The paper's
publisher,
Craig Moon, issued a public
apology on the front page of the newspaper. Many remarked on the
similarity of this scandal to that of the
Jayson Blair situation at the
New York Times, although it received
less national attention.
In
May 2006, USA Today reported that
the National
Security Agency
had been working with AT&T, Verizon, and
BellSouth to compile “the largest database
in the world,” according to the anonymous sources inside the agency
that went public. This allowed the paper to uncover a new
facet of the agency and further upset the White House after the
New York Times revealed the
Bush administration authorized the NSA to wiretap international
phone calls and e-mails traveling within the U.S.
Both stories challenged the administration's ability to spy on
alleged terrorists without a judge’s approval, a provision of the
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act established in 1978. But unlike
the
Times' story, the
USA Today story provoked
private telecommunications companies to enter the debate amid the
initial developments for the next Telecommunications Act, popularly
nicknamed the "net neutrality" or "equal internet access"
bill.
On June
29, 2006, a press release for AT&T stated, “The U.S.
Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor
deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because
doing so would cause ‘exceptionally grave harm to national
security’ and would violate both civil and criminal statutes.”
BellSouth, which announced its merger with AT&T on March 5, denies releasing any records to the NSA and
requested the newspaper retract claims in its story asserting
BellSouth “provided phone records of its customers to NSA.” “Both
BellSouth and Verizon Communications Inc., another company cited in
the story, denied this week that they provided the calling
records,” according to the AP. On
June
30,
USA Today published a statement: “The denial was
unexpected. The newspaper had spoken with BellSouth and Verizon for
several weeks about the substance of the report.”
On
August 17,
2006,
U.S. District Judge
Anna Diggs
Taylor in Detroit issued a 43-page ruling stating the program
is unconstitutional, but did not immediately suspend the program
and grants a temporary stay, in which the American Civil Liberties
Union continued fighting the program's legality in the case
ACLU v. NSA.
Taylor’s ruling states the program violates the FISA court
standards, which provide oversight for all wire taps. The FISA
court provides retroactive review of all government wiretaps and
allows all government agencies 72 hours before presenting their
case for wiretapping before the court. “There are no hereditary
kings in America and no such powers created by the constitution,”
Taylor writes.
In a
USA Today editorial, the staff wrote, “Much has
changed since terrorists rammed planes into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. But one thing that has not is that America is a
constitutional democracy with checks and balances. A ruling such as
Thursday’s is a useful and forceful affirmation of that.”
The White House issued a statement saying that it disagreed with
the decision and declared that the program was legal.
Finally in 2007, the Taylor ruling was reversed for lack of
evidence by the Supreme Court, which said that the ACLU had no
evidence that its own communications had been intercepted without a
warrant, and therefore the ACLU did not have a basis to challenge
the legality of the wiretaps. The majority decision denied that the
ACLU had the standing to bring the case to court. The Supreme Court
declined to rule on the legality of the wiretap program.
TV show
In 1988, an attempt was made to bring the breezy style of
USA
Today to television. The result was the syndicated series
USA Today: The Television Show (later re-titled
USA
Today on TV), which was a joint venture between Gannett and
producer
Grant Tinker. Correspondents
on the series included Edie Magnus, Robin Young, Boyd Matson,
Kenneth Walker, Dale Harimoto, Ann Abernathy, Bill Macatee, and
Beth Ruyak. As with the
USA Today tabloid, the show was
divided into four "sections" corresponding to the different parts
of the paper - News, Money, Sports, and Life. The program left the
air in early 1990.
Awards
Parodies
Parodies of
USA Today have
appeared in various
movies and
TV shows over the years, such as:
- The
Harvard
Lampoon
published a parody issue of USA Today in
1986.
- the futuristic 2015 look of a USA Today (Hill Valley edition) seen
in Back to the Future
Part II (1989)
- a spinoff red planet version entitled Mars Today seen
in Total Recall (1990)
- an animated, dynamically updating e-paper version seen in Minority Report (2002)
- a paper called BSA Today in an alternate reality where
North America is still governed by the United Kingdom as the
British States of America, seen in Sliders (1995)
- Universe Today appeared in Babylon 5. The newspaper is custom-printed at
a booth, where each customer can choose certain sections to include
or exclude. It included at least an "Eye on Minbari" section.
- an extended sequence of Doonesbury
strips in the 1980s mocked the paper.
- In The Simpsons episode
Homer Defined, Homer reads a
newspaper called USofA Today with the cover story:
"America's Favorite Pencil - #2 is #1." Homer reads aloud another
headline: "SAT scores are declining at a slower rate." After Lisa
criticizes it, Homer says "this is the only newspaper in the
country that is not afraid to tell the truth: that everything is
just fine".
- The comedy publication The
Onion publishes a feature on its front page called
"Statshot," patterned after similar statistics published on the
front page of USA Today.
- The 1988 computer game Hidden Agenda featured excerpts
from a newspaper called 'USA Yesterday' in press digests.
- The alternate history movie C.S.A.: The
Confederate States of America (2004)
features a newspaper called CSA Today.
- Country Musician Alan Jackson has a
song Entitled "USA Today" in which the paper thinks about doing a
story of the loneliest man in the "USA Today". The Song is on his
What I Do CD released in 2004.
- Comedian Stephen Colbert
frequently refers to it as "Today's The USA Today". He
sarcastically criticizes the newspaper for its abundant use of
colors and flashy, uninformative infographics.
See also
Notes
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