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USA Today
USA Today (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in New York City. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.
As of 2023, USA Today has the fifth largest print circulation in the United States, with 132,640 print subscribers. It has two million digital subscribers, the fourth-largest online circulation of any U.S. newspaper.
USA Today is distributed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the Pacific islands.
USA Today was first conceived on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project NN" met with the then-chairman of Gannett, Al Neuharth, in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Early regional prototypes of USA Today included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper that Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication. The two proposed design layouts were mailed to newsmakers and prominent leaders in journalism for review and feedback. Gannett's board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, titled USA Today, on December 5, 1981. At launch, Neuharth was appointed president and publisher of the newspaper, adding those responsibilities to his existing position as Gannett's chief executive officer.
Gannett announced the launch of the paper on April 20, 1982. USA Today began publishing on September 14, 1982, initially in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas, for a newsstand price of 25¢ (equivalent to 81¢ in 2024). After selling out the first issue, Gannett gradually expanded the national distribution of the paper, reaching an estimated circulation of 362,879 copies by the end of 1982, double the amount of sales that Gannett projected.[citation needed]
The design uniquely incorporated color graphics and photographs. Initially, only its front news section pages were rendered in four-color, while the remaining pages were printed in a spot color format. The paper's overall style and elevated use of graphics—developed by Neuharth, in collaboration with staff graphics designers George Rorick, Sam Ward, Suzy Parker, John Sherlock and Web Brya—were derided by critics, who referred to it as a "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in", because it opted to incorporate concise nuggets of information more akin to the style of television news, rather than in-depth stories like traditional newspapers, which many in the newspaper industry considered to be a dumbing down of content. Although USA Today had been profitable for just ten years as of 1997, it changed the appearance and feel of newspapers around the world.
Gannett invested in an expensive network of printing factories and distribution during the rollout of USA Today, meaning that the paper could be printed and distributed quickly. One of the results of this was USA Today having the luxury of a later time cutoff for journalists to submit stories, such that the paper was able to include sports scores from games that finished late in the next morning's paper. The sports section of USA Today, with its complete set of results, was well-regarded and generally seen as one of the main selling points of the paper.
On July 2, 1984, the newspaper switched from predominantly black-and-white to full-color photography and graphics in all four sections. The following week, on July 10, USA Today launched an international edition intended for U.S. readers abroad, followed four months later on October 8 with the rollout of the first transmission via satellite of its international version to Singapore. On April 8, 1985, the paper published its first special bonus section, a 12-page section called "Baseball '85", which previewed the 1985 Major League Baseball season.
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USA Today
USA Today (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in New York City. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.
As of 2023, USA Today has the fifth largest print circulation in the United States, with 132,640 print subscribers. It has two million digital subscribers, the fourth-largest online circulation of any U.S. newspaper.
USA Today is distributed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the Pacific islands.
USA Today was first conceived on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project NN" met with the then-chairman of Gannett, Al Neuharth, in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Early regional prototypes of USA Today included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper that Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication. The two proposed design layouts were mailed to newsmakers and prominent leaders in journalism for review and feedback. Gannett's board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, titled USA Today, on December 5, 1981. At launch, Neuharth was appointed president and publisher of the newspaper, adding those responsibilities to his existing position as Gannett's chief executive officer.
Gannett announced the launch of the paper on April 20, 1982. USA Today began publishing on September 14, 1982, initially in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas, for a newsstand price of 25¢ (equivalent to 81¢ in 2024). After selling out the first issue, Gannett gradually expanded the national distribution of the paper, reaching an estimated circulation of 362,879 copies by the end of 1982, double the amount of sales that Gannett projected.[citation needed]
The design uniquely incorporated color graphics and photographs. Initially, only its front news section pages were rendered in four-color, while the remaining pages were printed in a spot color format. The paper's overall style and elevated use of graphics—developed by Neuharth, in collaboration with staff graphics designers George Rorick, Sam Ward, Suzy Parker, John Sherlock and Web Brya—were derided by critics, who referred to it as a "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in", because it opted to incorporate concise nuggets of information more akin to the style of television news, rather than in-depth stories like traditional newspapers, which many in the newspaper industry considered to be a dumbing down of content. Although USA Today had been profitable for just ten years as of 1997, it changed the appearance and feel of newspapers around the world.
Gannett invested in an expensive network of printing factories and distribution during the rollout of USA Today, meaning that the paper could be printed and distributed quickly. One of the results of this was USA Today having the luxury of a later time cutoff for journalists to submit stories, such that the paper was able to include sports scores from games that finished late in the next morning's paper. The sports section of USA Today, with its complete set of results, was well-regarded and generally seen as one of the main selling points of the paper.
On July 2, 1984, the newspaper switched from predominantly black-and-white to full-color photography and graphics in all four sections. The following week, on July 10, USA Today launched an international edition intended for U.S. readers abroad, followed four months later on October 8 with the rollout of the first transmission via satellite of its international version to Singapore. On April 8, 1985, the paper published its first special bonus section, a 12-page section called "Baseball '85", which previewed the 1985 Major League Baseball season.