USA Today's strategy to fight back against threats from the Internet includes expanding its coverage of advertising-friendly topics and designing content specifically for smartphones and tablets, reported the Associated Press. The US paper with the largest print circulation has been losing advertising pages and cutting jobs.

Advertising-friendly content in practice means lots of travel tips, gadget reviews, sports features, financial advice and lifestyle recommendations, the AP explained. USA Today publisher Dave Hunke has been advised by the paper's VP of business development, 30-year-old Rudd Davis, who convinced him that the newsroom should emphasize topics that specifically attract digital readers, the AP added.

In November, USA Today launched a new website called Your Life, in a first attempt to fill this content need. The paper will launch further websites devoted to personal finance, personal technology and diversions, the AP specified.

Last week, USA TODAY launched a new mobile two-dimensional "2D" barcode strategy, one of the first in the U.S., which uses Microsoft Tags to link and, therefore measure, readers from print to the online publication. Currently one tag is being featured in print daily, which readers can scan with their phones--using the free application downloaded from http://gettag.mobi--for direct access to online content, including daily photos, financial news, sports scores, as well as video, to enhance the information experience.

While USA TODAY neither invented this concept nor the technology - it is quite popular in Europe and Asia, and linking from print to digital was also recently attempted with an augmented reality strategy at The Boston Globe -the paper is helping to introduce 2D barcode strategy to the American marketplace. Tags are free but the barcode system is proprietary.

USA Today has only five reporters covering Congress, but 27 covering entertainment news, the Gannett Blog reported, after its editor Jim Hopkins obtained copies of newsroom flow charts dated October 21-22. Hopkins, a former USA Today reporter, believes that "this is the first time USAT's editorial staffing breakdown has been made public."

The document showing the distribution of staff shows that as well as the five staff allocated to Congress/Politics, there are another six assigned to White House/Legal, another four to Federal and five to Economy/Jobs. This total number covering political issues is still less than the 27 focused on entertainment however, which accounts for by far the largest group.

There are now five Investigations reporters and five Database, six War/Defense, six Science/Energy/Environment , eight Your Life (a newly introduced section in both print and online), ten Travel and 13 Tech/Autos, for example.

USA Today is "disassembling its universal desk and a five-year effort at newsroom integration," Poynter's Rick Edmonds reported following discussion with the paper's publisher Dave Hunke. This effort will be replaced with "editing hubs by platform."

Staff will be organised around 15 distinct content areas and each will have its own top editor and a dedicated general manager to develop advertising and revenue opportunities, Hunke told Edmonds. Several managing editor jobs have been eliminated.

The changes are intended to allow the paper to expand its mobile and tablet products and fully take advantage of what these new platforms have to offer. The idea will be that offerings are "designed and edited to match the unique characteristics and markets" in both categories rather than just moving material from print and the website.

Hunke told Edmonds that part of the reason for this change was the feeling that the paper's print edition should focus on an older, general news audience, but that as tablet buyers so far seem to skew ten to 15 years younger than the typical print reader, a different approach was needed. He clarified that he did expect the print newspaper to continue to provide the biggest share of revenues for some time.