USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by
Allen 'Al' Neuharth. The paper has the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States (averaging over 2.25 million copies every
weekday), and among English-language broadsheets, it comes second world-wide, behind only the
2.6 million daily paid copies of The Times of India. Its circulation figures
are a matter of some dispute, however, as USA Today has many contracts ensuring distribution in hotels, often to customers
unaware they are paying for the newspaper. USA Today is distributed in all 50 states.
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 was available. 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.
Early on, the initial success of the paper was met with criticism. Many people were hesitant to read a color newspaper and
derided it as '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 some say resemble television sets more than newspaper racks. 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 McLean,
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.
On September 7, 2004, the newsstand price of a USA Today newspaper was increased from 50 cents (the paper's price since 1985) to
75 cents.
Layout and format
USA Today is known for synthesizing news down to easy-to-read-and-comprehend stories. 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 movies, TV and trends, and a travel supplement called "Life: Destinations and Diversions." 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).
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[1]. 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. 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.
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 lede 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[2] and Impressionist.[3]
Controversial incidents
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 records 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. See also: Journalistic fraud
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.[4] 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.[5]
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.”[6] BellSouth, which announced its merger with AT&T on March
5,[7] denies releasing any records to the NSA
[8] and requested the newspaper retract claims in its story
asserting BellSouth “provided phone records of its customers to NSA.”[9] “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.[10] 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.”[11]
On August 17, 2006, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit issued a 43-page ruling stating the program is unconstitutional[12], but did not immediately suspend the program and grants a
temporary stay, in which the Bush administration and the American Civil Liberties Union continue 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.
The White House issued a statement saying that it disagreed with the decision and declared that the program was legal.[13]
In a USA TODAY editorial, the staff writes, “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.”[14]
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
- an extended sequence of Doonesbury strips in the 1980s mocked the paper.
- in the Simpsons, 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.
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 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.
See also
Notes
- ^ Associated Press. "Circulation at the Top 20
Newspapers", Yahoo! Finance, 2007-04-30. Retrieved on
2007-04-30.
- ^ Barnhurst, Kevin G. (2006). After Modernism. AMERICAN
MEDIA IN THE XX CENTURY: Chapter 1 (part 5). University of Illinois at Chicago. Retrieved on 2007-05-03. “The mélange of styles and practices in printed and now web-based newspapers, although
postmodern in terms of scholarly and design thinking, might more meaningfully be understood as neo-Victorian. The new styles,
embodied most famously in USA TODAY and its clones, mark a return to the mystifying abundance of facts and stories that
newspapers of the industrial revolution made visually present to readers.”
- ^ Stephen Colbert. (2006, 13
November). The Colbert Report, Episode 2143 [TV-Series]. Comedy Central. “The world is so scary now, do we really want to see the world in crisp detail? I mean,
shouldn’t we want to see the world right now more like an impressionist painting, kind of blurry, a lot of color and light but
not much information … like USA TODAY”
- ^ Cauley, Leslie. "NSA has massive database of
Americans’ phone calls", USA Today, 2006-05-11. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Risen, James, Eric Lichtblau.
"Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" (Fee), The New York
Times, 2005-12-15, p. A1. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ AT&T (2006-06-27). AT&T Statement on NSA Issue. Press
release. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ AT&T (2006-03-05). AT&T,
BellSouth to Merge. Press release. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Cauley, Leslie. "In statement,
BellSouth denies giving information to National Security Agency", USA Today, 2006-05-16. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Pelofsky, Jeremy. "US FCC chief says won't probe NSA call program", Reuters, 2007-05-23. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Associated Press. "BellSouth Wants USA
Today Retraction: Paper Claimed Telecom Company Gave Phone Records To NSA", CBS
News, 2006-05-18. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ "A Note to Our Readers", USA Today, 2006-06-30.
Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Jackson, David. "Judge: NSA warrantless
wiretapping unconstitutional", USA Today, 2006-08-17. Retrieved on 2007-05-03.
- ^ Office of the Press Secretary, White House (2006-08-17). Statement on the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Press
release. Retrieved on 2007-05-03. “We couldn’t disagree more with this ruling… The
Terrorist Surveillance Program is firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to make sure steps are taken to protect civil
liberties.”
- ^ USA Today editorial staff. "Wiretap ruling
affirms that presidents aren’t monarchs", USA Today, 2006-08-17. Retrieved on
2007-05-03. '
External links
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