USA Today - Tough Challenges Ahead For a Newspaper Subscription Leader

For more than 27 years, USA Today newspaper is one of the leading powers in the printed news arena. We examine their most important characteristics and discuss the present and future challenges the paper will be facing in these tough times.

USA Today is by far the leader in commercial daily newspapers; their daily circulation reaches almost 3 million copies (weekdays). It is the second largest daily circulation globally, following the Times of India. The paper is distributed across all fifty States in the US and selected global locations such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

The idea of a colorful paper with pan american distribution was thought at the paper's launch to be a big risk, and the paper received early criticism, receiving the derisive nickname "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 resemble television sets. 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.

The paper survived the risk of nationwide distribution of a colorful newspaper through television box – like vending machines; they were also among the first to introduce satellite distribution of content, in order to distribute printing across the US. In earlier times there was heavy distribution at travel points and hotels, except the usual newsstands.

The most important characteristic of USA Today is their ability to simplify news – break it down to easy-to-comprehend news stories that can be absorbed by mass population. The paper is divided into four main sections: News, Sports, Money, and Life, which are also color-coded to help people identifying them more easily.

Moving along with Web trends, Garnett established a USA Today web site that has become one of the major players on the Internet, ranking in the top 1000 list. The site serves as a daily news information portal and also provide USA Today subscription services worldwide. Almost 5 million Web users from the US alone visit the site every month, mostly Caucasian male between 35-60 years with no kids and an annual income of $30-$60,000.

With the advent of content digitization in such a massive scale due to the spread of Internet and mobile Web usage, the paper will have to find ways to penetrate these new markets and leverage the loss of daily sales which is currently observed throughout the newspaper Industry. As technology on digital book readers evolves and the technology is adopted by masses, it is possible to see in the coming years a large adoption of digital issues of the newspaper being distributed electronically through Kindle-like devices.