USA Today
Encyclopedia
USA Today is a national American
daily newspaper
published by the Gannett Company
. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal
for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper has 1.8 million copies as of March 2010 compared to the Wall Street Journal's 2.1 million though this figure includes the WSJ's 400,000 paid-for, online subscribers. USA Today remains the widest circulated print newspaper in the United States. USA Today is distributed in all fifty states
, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico
, Guam
, Canada
and the United Kingdom
. The newspaper has its headquarters in the Tysons Corner
area of Fairfax County, Virginia
. Currently, USA Today sells for US$1.00 in newsstands; however, it is often found free at hotels and airports that distribute it to their customers.
, a DVD column, film reviews
and trends, and a travel supplement called Destinations & Diversions (section D). The international edition of the paper features News and Money and Sports and Life combined into two sections.
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, usually the next page of that section). On certain days, the news or sports section will take up two paper sections, and there will be a second cover story within the second section.
Each section is denoted by a certain color to differentiate sections beyond lettering and is seen in a box the top-left corner of the first page, with News being blue
(section A), Money with green
(section B), red
for Sports (section C), and purple
for Life (section D). Orange
is used for bonus sections (section E or above), which are published occasionally such as for business travel
trends and the Olympics; other bonus sections for sports (such as for the PGA Tour
preview, NCAA Basketball Tournament
s, Memorial Day
auto races (Indianapolis 500
and Coca-Cola 600
), NFL
opening weekend and the Super Bowl
) previously used the orange color, but now use the sports red in their bonus sections. On days featuring bonus sections or business holidays (when the four pages of stock tables are unneeded), the Money and Life sections are usually combined into one section, while combinations of the Friday Life editions into one section are common during quiet weeks.
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, with data provided by Weather Channel
meteorologists. In the bottom left-hand corner of the weather page is a graphic called "Weather Focus," which explains different meteorological phenomena. On some days, the Weather Focus could be a photo of a rare meteorological event. 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
.
Book coverage, including reviews and a national sales chart is seen on Thursdays in Life, with the official full A.C. Nielsen television ratings
chart printed on Wednesdays or Thursdays, depending on release. The paper also publishes the Mediabase
survey for several genres of music, based on radio airplay spins on Tuesdays, along with their own chart of the top ten singles in general on Wednesdays. Advertising
coverage is seen in the Monday Money section, which often includes a review of a current television ad, and after Super Bowl Sunday
, a review of the ads aired during the broadcast with the results of the Ad Track live survey.
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 story
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.
Also, in most of the sections' front pages, on the lower left hand corner, are "USA Today Snapshots", which give statistics of various lifestyle interests according to the section it is in (for example, a snapshot in "Life" could show how many people tend to watch a certain genre of television show based upon the type of mood they are in at the time). These "Snapshots" are shown through graphs which are made up of various illustrations of objects that roughly pertain to the graphs subject matter (using the example above, the graph's bars could be made up of several TV sets, or ended by one). These are usually loosely based on research by a national institute (with the source in the box below the graph in fine print to show credit).
Starting in February 2008, the newspaper added a magazine
supplement called Open Air, appearing several times a year.
Some of the changes include:
The current Editorial Page Editor is Brian Gallagher, who has worked for the newspaper since its founding in 1982. Other members of the Editorial Board include deputy editorial page editor Bill Sternberg, executive Forum editor John Siniff, op-ed/Forum page editor Glen Nishimura, operations editor Thuan Le Elston, letters editor Michelle Poblete, web content editor Eileen Rivers, and editorial writers Dan Carney, George Hager, and Saundra Torry. The newspaper's website calls this group "demographically and ideologically diverse."
discovered he had contracted HIV during the blood transfusions he had received during one of his two heart surgeries. He and his wife kept his illness private until April 8, 1992, when reports that the newspaper USA Today was about to publish a story about his condition forced him to make a public announcement that he had the disease.
, 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 investigator
s to Cuba
, Israel
and Jordan
, and sifting through stacks of hotel record
s 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.
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, but did not immediately suspend the program and grants a temporary stay, in which the American Civil Liberties Union continued 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.
In a USA Today editorial, the staff wrote, “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.”
The White House issued a statement saying that it disagreed with the decision and declared that the program was legal.
Finally in 2007, the Taylor ruling was reversed for lack of evidence by the Supreme Court, which said that the ACLU had no evidence that its own communications had been intercepted without a warrant, and therefore the ACLU did not have a basis to challenge the legality of the wiretaps. The majority decision denied that the ACLU had the standing to bring the case to court. The Supreme Court declined to rule on the legality of the wiretap program.
. The result was the syndicated series USA Today: The Television Show (later re-titled USA Today on TV, then simply USA Today), 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 newspaper itself, the show was divided into four "sections" corresponding to the different parts of the paper – News, Money, Sports, and Life. The series did not really catch on ratings-wise and was canceled in January 1990, lasting about one and a half seasons.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
daily newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published by the Gannett Company
Gannett Company
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly-traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, near McLean. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend...
. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper has 1.8 million copies as of March 2010 compared to the Wall Street Journal's 2.1 million though this figure includes the WSJ's 400,000 paid-for, online subscribers. USA Today remains the widest circulated print newspaper in the United States. USA Today is distributed in all fifty states
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The newspaper has its headquarters in the Tysons Corner
Tysons Corner, Virginia
Tysons Corner is an unincorporated census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Part of the Washington Metropolitan Area located in Northern Virginia, Tysons Corner lies between the community of McLean and the town of Vienna along the Capital Beltway . The population was...
area of Fairfax County, Virginia
Fairfax County, Virginia
Fairfax County is a county in Virginia, in the United States. Per the 2010 Census, the population of the county is 1,081,726, making it the most populous jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with 13.5% of Virginia's population...
. Currently, USA Today sells for US$1.00 in newsstands; however, it is often found free at hotels and airports that distribute it to their customers.
Layout and format
USA Today is known for synthesizing news down to easy-to-read-and-comprehend stories. In the main edition seen in the United States and some Canadian cities, 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 entertainment (subtitled Weekend; section E), which features televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, a DVD column, film reviews
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
and trends, and a travel supplement called Destinations & Diversions (section D). The international edition of the paper features News and Money and Sports and Life combined into two sections.
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, usually the next page of that section). On certain days, the news or sports section will take up two paper sections, and there will be a second cover story within the second section.
Each section is denoted by a certain color to differentiate sections beyond lettering and is seen in a box the top-left corner of the first page, with News being blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...
(section A), Money with green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
(section B), red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
for Sports (section C), and purple
Purple
Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....
for Life (section D). Orange
Orange (colour)
The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
is used for bonus sections (section E or above), which are published occasionally such as for business travel
Business travel
Business travel is the practice of people traveling for purposes related to their work. It is on the rise especially with foreign business markets opening up...
trends and the Olympics; other bonus sections for sports (such as for the PGA Tour
PGA Tour
The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...
preview, NCAA Basketball Tournament
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship
The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship in the top tier of college basketball...
s, Memorial Day
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...
auto races (Indianapolis 500
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, also known as the Indianapolis 500, the 500 Miles at Indianapolis, the Indy 500 or The 500, is an American automobile race, held annually, typically on the last weekend in May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana...
and Coca-Cola 600
Coca-Cola 600
The Coca-Cola 600, formerly known as the World 600, is a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race held each year at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina on Memorial Day weekend...
), NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
opening weekend and the Super Bowl
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...
) previously used the orange color, but now use the sports red in their bonus sections. On days featuring bonus sections or business holidays (when the four pages of stock tables are unneeded), the Money and Life sections are usually combined into one section, while combinations of the Friday Life editions into one section are common during quiet weeks.
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
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
, 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, with data provided by Weather Channel
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...
meteorologists. In the bottom left-hand corner of the weather page is a graphic called "Weather Focus," which explains different meteorological phenomena. On some days, the Weather Focus could be a photo of a rare meteorological event. 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
S&P 500
The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...
.
Book coverage, including reviews and a national sales chart is seen on Thursdays in Life, with the official full A.C. Nielsen television ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
chart printed on Wednesdays or Thursdays, depending on release. The paper also publishes the Mediabase
Mediabase
Mediabase is a music industry service that monitors radio station airplay in 180 US and Canadian markets. Mediabase publishes music charts and data based on the most played songs on terrestrial and satellite radio, and provides in-depth analytical tools for radio and record industry professionals...
survey for several genres of music, based on radio airplay spins on Tuesdays, along with their own chart of the top ten singles in general on Wednesdays. Advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
coverage is seen in the Monday Money section, which often includes a review of a current television ad, and after Super Bowl Sunday
Super Bowl Sunday
Super Bowl Sunday, sometimes referred to as Super Sunday, is the Sunday on which the Super Bowl is played. Typically occurring in late January or early February, it is considered a de facto national holiday in the United States. On Super Bowl Sunday many people gather to watch the Super Bowl...
, a review of the ads aired during the broadcast with the results of the Ad Track live survey.
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
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 story
News style
News style is the prose style used for news reporting in media such as newspapers, radio and television....
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.
Also, in most of the sections' front pages, on the lower left hand corner, are "USA Today Snapshots", which give statistics of various lifestyle interests according to the section it is in (for example, a snapshot in "Life" could show how many people tend to watch a certain genre of television show based upon the type of mood they are in at the time). These "Snapshots" are shown through graphs which are made up of various illustrations of objects that roughly pertain to the graphs subject matter (using the example above, the graph's bars could be made up of several TV sets, or ended by one). These are usually loosely based on research by a national institute (with the source in the box below the graph in fine print to show credit).
Starting in February 2008, the newspaper added a magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
supplement called Open Air, appearing several times a year.
2011 Tweaks
On January 24th, 2011, to reverse a slide of revenue, the paper introduced a tweaked format, changing a few looks of the front pages of sections.Some of the changes include:
- A larger logo at the top.
- A new sans-serif font, called Prelo, for certain headlines of main stories.
- Increasing and decreasing of mastheads and white space in order to present a cleaner style.
Opinion Section
The opinion section prints USA Today editorials, columns by guest writers and members of the Board of Contributors, letters to the editor, and editorial cartoons. One unique feature of the USA Today editorial page is the publication of opposing points of view: alongside the editorial board's piece on the day's topic runs an opposing view by a guest writer, often an expert in the field.The current Editorial Page Editor is Brian Gallagher, who has worked for the newspaper since its founding in 1982. Other members of the Editorial Board include deputy editorial page editor Bill Sternberg, executive Forum editor John Siniff, op-ed/Forum page editor Glen Nishimura, operations editor Thuan Le Elston, letters editor Michelle Poblete, web content editor Eileen Rivers, and editorial writers Dan Carney, George Hager, and Saundra Torry. The newspaper's website calls this group "demographically and ideologically diverse."
Newsroom restructuring
On August 27, 2010, USA Today announced that they would be reorganizing their newsroom. 130 people are to be laid off, a new publication called USA Today Sports will be created, and the paper will be shifting its focus away from print and more on digital platforms like USA Today.com and their mobile phone applications (apps).Arthur Ashe
In 1988, Arthur AsheArthur Ashe
Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. was a professional tennis player, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. During his career, he won three Grand Slam titles, putting him among the best ever from the United States...
discovered he had contracted HIV during the blood transfusions he had received during one of his two heart surgeries. He and his wife kept his illness private until April 8, 1992, when reports that the newspaper USA Today was about to publish a story about his condition forced him to make a public announcement that he had the disease.
Jack Kelley
In March 2004, the newspaper was hit by a major scandal when it was revealed that Jack KelleyJack Kelley
Jack Kelley was a longtime USA Today reporter and nominee and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.He is perhaps best known for his professional downfall in March 2004, when it came out that he had long been fabricating stories, going so far as to write up scripts so associates could pretend to...
, a long-time USA Today correspondent and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, had been fabricating stories. The newspaper did an extensive review of Kelley's stories, including sending investigator
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
s to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, and sifting through stacks of hotel record
Document
The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...
s 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
Jayson Blair
Jayson Blair is an American reporter formerly with The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of plagiarism and fabrication in his stories. Since 2007 he has worked as a life coach in the field of mental health.-Background:Blair was born in...
situation at the New York Times, although it received less national attention.
NSA Database
In May 2006, USA Today reported that the National Security AgencyNational Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
had been working with AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, Verizon, and BellSouth
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
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
Anna Diggs Taylor
Anna Diggs Taylor is a United States District Judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. She graduated from Barnard College in 1954 and Yale Law School in 1957, and worked in the Office of Solicitor for the United States Department of Labor...
in Detroit issued a 43-page ruling stating the program is unconstitutional, but did not immediately suspend the program and grants a temporary stay, in which the American Civil Liberties Union continued fighting the program's legality in the case ACLU v. NSA
ACLU v. NSA
American Civil Liberties Union et al., v. National Security Agency / Central et al., 493 F.3d 644 , is a case decided July 6, 2007, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to bring the suit against the NSA, because...
.
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.
In a USA Today editorial, the staff wrote, “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.”
The White House issued a statement saying that it disagreed with the decision and declared that the program was legal.
Finally in 2007, the Taylor ruling was reversed for lack of evidence by the Supreme Court, which said that the ACLU had no evidence that its own communications had been intercepted without a warrant, and therefore the ACLU did not have a basis to challenge the legality of the wiretaps. The majority decision denied that the ACLU had the standing to bring the case to court. The Supreme Court declined to rule on the legality of the wiretap program.
TV show
In the fall of 1988, an attempt was made to bring the breezy style of USA Today to televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. The result was the syndicated series USA Today: The Television Show (later re-titled USA Today on TV, then simply USA Today), which was a joint venture between Gannett and producer Grant Tinker
Grant Tinker
Grant Almerin Tinker is the former chairman and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986, co-founder of MTM Enterprises, and television producer. Tinker is the former husband of television actress Mary Tyler Moore...
. Correspondents on the series included Edie Magnus, Robin Young
Robin Young
Robin Young is an American television and radio personality. She has been a Boston, Massachusetts-based radio and television host since the mid-1970s when she hosted Evening Magazine for WBZ-TV....
, Boyd Matson
Boyd Matson
Boyd Matson is the former anchor of National Geographic Explorer and a former co-anchor of NBC's Weekend Today program. He was also an NBC News correspondent in the 1980s, working mostly on news features and earlier as a sports reporter on KNBC in Los Angeles. He now hosts the show Wild Chronicles...
, Kenneth Walker, Dale Harimoto, Ann Abernathy, Bill Macatee
Bill Macatee
Bill Macatee is an American sports broadcaster.-Early life and career:Macatee was born in Rome, New York, and grew up in El Paso, Texas. In 1978, he earned a bachelor of science degree in speech from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas...
, and Beth Ruyak. As with the newspaper itself, the show was divided into four "sections" corresponding to the different parts of the paper – News, Money, Sports, and Life. The series did not really catch on ratings-wise and was canceled in January 1990, lasting about one and a half seasons.
Awards
- List of USA Today major-league baseball awards
- USA Today Minor League Player of the Year AwardUSA Today Minor League Player of the Year AwardListed below in chronological order are the Minor League Baseball players chosen by USA Today as recipients of the USA Today Minor League Player of the Year Award...
- USA Today All-USA high school baseball teamUSA Today All-USA high school baseball teamEach year, USA Today, an American newspaper, awards outstanding high-school baseball players with a place on its All-USA High School Baseball Team. The newspaper names athletes whom they believe to be the best baseball players from high schools across the United States...
(including High School Baseball Player of the Year and High School Baseball Coach of the Year) - USA Today All-USA high school basketball teamUSA Today All-USA high school basketball teamEach year, USA Today, an American newspaper, awards outstanding high-school basketball players with a place on its male and female All-USA high school basketball teams. The newspaper names athletes whom it believes to be the best basketball players from high schools around the United States...
- USA Today All-Joe TeamUSA Today All-Joe TeamThe USA Today All-Joe team is an annual selection of National Football League players and coaches deemed hard workers and over-achievers that may be overlooked by the biased media...
(NFL) - USA Today/National Prep Poll High School Football National ChampionshipHigh School Football National ChampionshipThe High School Football National Championship is a national championship honor awarded to the best high school football team in the United States of America based on rankings from USA Today and the National Prep Poll. There have been some efforts over the years at organizing a single-game playoff...
- USA Today All-USA high school football teamUSA Today All-USA high school football teamEach year, USA Today, an American newspaper, awards outstanding high-school American football players with a place on its All-USA High School Football Team. The newspaper names athletes whom it believes to be the best football players from high schools around the United States...
(including Super 25 teams in U.S. and Top 10 teams in East, South, Midwest, and West regions) - USA Today All-USA high school football teamUSA Today All-USA high school football teamEach year, USA Today, an American newspaper, awards outstanding high-school American football players with a place on its All-USA High School Football Team. The newspaper names athletes whom it believes to be the best football players from high schools around the United States...
(including Offensive and Defensive high school players of the year) - USA Today High School Football Coach of the Year
Parodies
Parodies of USA Today have appeared in various films and TV shows over the years, such as:- The Harvard LampoonHarvard LampoonThe Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...
published a parody issue of USA Today in 1986. - A futuristic 2015 edition of USA Today (Hill Valley edition) is seen in Back to the Future Part IIBack to the Future Part IIBack to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson...
(1989) - A spinoff red planet version entitled Mars Today seen in Total RecallTotal RecallTotal Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox & Mel Johnson, Jr.. It is based on the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”...
(1990) - An animated, dynamically updating e-paperElectronic paperElectronic paper, e-paper and electronic ink are a range of display technology which are designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays, electronic paper displays reflect light like ordinary paper...
version seen in Minority ReportMinority Report (film)Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
(2002) - 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 SlidersSlidersSliders is an American science fiction television series. It was broadcast for five seasons, beginning in 1995 and ending in 2000. The series follows a group of travelers as they use a wormhole to "slide" between different parallel universes. The show was created by Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Tormé...
(1995) - Universe Today appeared in Babylon 5Babylon 5Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
. The newspaper is custom-printed at a booth, where each customer can choose certain sections to include or exclude. It included at least an "Eye on MinbariMinbariThe Minbari are a fictional alien race featured in the television show Babylon 5. The Minbari characters of Delenn and Lennier figure prominently throughout the series; Neroon, Draal, and Dukhat are less prominent Minbari characters....
" section. - An extended sequence of DoonesburyDoonesburyDoonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...
strips in the 1980s mocked the paper. - In The SimpsonsThe SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
episode Homer DefinedHomer Defined"Homer Defined" is the fifth episode of The Simpsons third season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 17, 1991. In the episode, Homer accidentally saves the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant from meltdown by choosing a button to a counting rhyme...
, 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". - The comedy publication The OnionThe OnionThe Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...
publishes a feature on its front page called "Statshot," patterned after similar statistics published on the front page of USA Today. - The 1988 computer game Hidden AgendaHidden Agenda (game)Hidden Agenda is a text-based computer strategy game whose scenario was designed and written in 1988 by Jim Gasperini, with input from project consultant Eric Ehrmann. While the scenario was implemented in text form, the game made use of an innovative graphical interface, with naturalistic...
featured excerpts from a newspaper called 'USA Yesterday' in press digests. - The alternate history movie C.S.A.: The Confederate States of AmericaC.S.A.: The Confederate States of AmericaC.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional "tongue-in-cheek" account of an alternate history, in which the Confederates won the American Civil War, establishing the new Confederate States of America...
(2004) features a newspaper called CSA Today. - Country musician Alan JacksonAlan JacksonAlan Eugene Jackson is an American country music singer, known for blending traditional honky tonk and mainstream country sounds and penning many of his own hits. He has recorded 13 studio albums, 3 Greatest Hits albums, 2 Holiday albums, 1 Gospel album and several compilations, all on the Arista...
has a song Entitled "USA TodayUSA Today (song)"USA Today" is the title of a song written and recorded by American country music artist Alan Jackson. It was released in August 2005 as the fourth single from his 2004 album What I Do...
" in which the paper thinks about doing a story of the loneliest man in the "USA Today". The Song is on his What I DoWhat I DoWhat I Do is the eleventh studio album by American country music artist Alan Jackson. It was released on September 7, 2004, and produced four singles for Jackson on the Hot Country Songs charts: "Too Much of a Good Thing" and "Monday Morning Church" both reached #5, while "The Talkin' Song Repair...
CD released in 2004. - Comedian Stephen ColbertStephen ColbertStephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
frequently refers to it as "Today's The USA Today". He sarcastically criticizes the newspaper for its abundant use of colors and flashy, uninformative infographics.