Critics sneered at McPaper, then newspapers everywhere copied its colour graphics
When USA Today launched in 1982 with short stories, bright colour and weather maps, rivals mocked it as television you could wrap fish in. Within five years it claimed the largest daily readership of any American newspaper, and its look spread to papers around the world.
The idea took shape on 29 February 1980, when a Gannett task force called Project NN met chairman Al Neuharth in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Prototypes printed in June 1981 were mailed to journalists and newsmakers for feedback, and the board approved a national paper that December. It went on sale on 14 September 1982 around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., at 25 cents. The first issue sold out, and by year's end circulation was estimated at 362,879, double Gannett's forecast.
Its style was the point. Neuharth and a team of graphic designers built pages around colour photos, charts and bite-sized items rather than long reports, which many in the trade dismissed as dumbing down. Gannett also spent heavily on printing plants and distribution, allowing later deadlines; the sports pages could carry results from late games, and they became a big selling point. From July 1984 all four sections ran in full colour, and satellite transmission soon carried an international edition to Singapore.
Success was costly. The paper lost money for most of its first four years, piling up a 233 million dollar deficit after tax, before turning its first profit in May 1987. By late 1985 it was the second-largest paper in the country at 1.4 million copies a day, and its readership was estimated at nearly 6.6 million by 1991. The edition covering the September 11 attacks set an all-time single-day record of 3,638,600 copies.
Its history has blemishes too: in 2004 senior foreign correspondent Jack Kelley resigned after being found to have fabricated reports for a decade. Front-page advertising arrived in 1999, and the Super Bowl Ad Meter, its survey of commercials, began in 1989. Now headquartered in New York, it drew more than 134 million monthly website visits by 2026 but only 89,200 print subscribers.
Source: USA Today
