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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. 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 lead 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.
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. 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[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.
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.”
Parodies
Parodies of USA Today have appeared in various movies and tv shows over the years, such as:
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The Harvard Lampoon published a parody issue of USA Today in 1986.
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the futuristic 2015 look of a USA Today (Hill Valley edition) seen in Back to the Future Part II (1989)
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the futuristic 2015 look of a USA Today (Hill Valley edition) seen in Back to the Future Part II (1989)
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a spinoff red planet version entitled Mars Today seen in Total Recall (1990)
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an animated, dynamically updating e-paper version seen in Minority Report (2002)
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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)
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Universe Today appeared in Babylon 5
an extended sequence of Doonesbury strips in the 1980s mocked the paper.
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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."
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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.
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The 1988 computer game Hidden Agenda featured excerpts from a newspaper called 'USA Yesterday' in press digests.
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The alternate history movie
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) features a newspaper called CSA Today.
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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.
Widgets
On September 5, 2007, Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today, announced that the newspaper initiated the offer of 3 kinds of widgets and will offer 4 more. It allows its online users to install widgets on their blogs and personal Web pages that contain news updates and other info. Widgets are a Web accessory to jazz up home pages, blogs and profiles on social networking platforms. Users of Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system can also put widgets on the desktop of their computers. The widgets are compatible with many blogging platforms and social networking
sites.
LINKS
and REFERENCE
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Associated
Press. "Circulation
at the Top 20 Newspapers", Yahoo! Finance,
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Barnhurst,
Kevin G. (2006). After
Modernism. AMERICAN MEDIA IN THE XX CENTURY: Chapter 1 (part 5).
University of Illinois at Chicago. “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.”
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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”
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Cauley,
Leslie. "NSA
has massive database of Americans’ phone calls", USA
Today
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Risen,
James, Eric Lichtblau. "Bush
Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" (Fee), The New
York Times
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AT&T
AT&T
Statement on NSA Issue. Press release..
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AT&T
AT&T,
BellSouth to Merge. Press release.
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Cauley,
Leslie. "In
statement, BellSouth denies giving information to National Security
Agency", USA Today
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Pelofsky,
Jeremy. "US
FCC chief says won't probe NSA call program", Reuters
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Associated
Press. "BellSouth
Wants USA Today Retraction: Paper Claimed Telecom Company Gave Phone
Records To NSA", CBS News
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"A
Note to Our Readers", USA Today
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Jackson,
David. "Judge:
NSA warrantless wiretapping unconstitutional", USA Today,
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Office
of the Press Secretary, White House Statement
on the Terrorist Surveillance Program. “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.”
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USA
Today editorial staff. "Wiretap
ruling affirms that presidents aren’t monarchs", USA
Today,
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Yahoo.com,
USA Today distributes news by 'widget'
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USA
Today website
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