In 1982, "we did extensive and expensive research that showed readers around the country were not quite as satisfied with their newspapers as most editors and publishers thought they were," said former Gannett Chairman Al Neuharth, USA Today's founder.

At the time, this ‘populist’ approach was both atypical and criticized by quality papers, as suggested Ken Paulson, who rejoined USA Today as editor in 2004 and was there when it launched.

"There was a lot of criticism of USA Today for giving people what they wanted instead of what they needed, but is there a news organization today that isn't trying very hard to deliver what people want?"

Not only was this approach perfectly adapted to the audience at the time, but many newspapers have now followed along the same route. USA Today’s ground-breaking approach also came from its recognition that television had become the predominant medium, and that it should emulate it.

In contrast to the dull-looking  New York Times and Wall Street Journal, “if you want to grab the television generation you've got to transfer from the tube to print a lot of the stuff that the TV generation likes,” said Neuharth.

Thus USA today ramped up vivid colors, pictures, color-coded weather maps, and produced a paper that “was lighter in tone in the beginning and some stories were so abbreviated that they were a little short on substance,” said Paulson.

USA Today is still the US’ largest paper by circulation, averaging about 2,27 million copies daily. It even increased its ad revenues by 3.1% in 2006.

USA Today’s big leap was providing a newspaper tailored to a generation’s needs and likes. So with the Internet, which will be the next newspaper to transfer the digital screen onto a (electronic) print product?

Source: Chicago Tribune