USA Today
USA Today is a national American newspaper published by the Gannett Corporation. The paper has the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States (averaging over 2.25 million copies every weekday), and is distributed to all 50 states. It was founded by Allen "Al" Neuharth.Colorful and bold, with many large diagrams, charts, and photographs, USA Today was founded in the 1980s with the goal of providing an alternative to colorless and wordy papers of the time such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Though the paper is a consumer success, some critics have accused it of having a patronizing tone with a tendency to trivialize news stories. It has a distinct prose style, which infrequently uses subordinate clauses in sentences, and tends to have no more than three brief sentences per paragraph. As a result, in its early days it was jokingly referred to as 'McPaper' or 'McNewspaper' in a reference to McDonald's, especially by more established publications. However, the style of using color, graphics and smaller features has been imitated by other printed newspapers and magazines. In addition, it has been widely praised for its sports coverage.
In March 2004, the newspaper was hit by a major scandal when it was revealed that Jack Kelley, 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 investigators to Cuba, Israel and Jordan, and sifting through stacks of hotel records to determine if Kelley was in the locations he claimed to be filing stories from. Kelley resigned, but denied the charges. The USA Today 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.
From their start in 1982 until 2001, Larry King was a columnist for USA Today but was ousted from the paper in September 2001 due to the executives at the paper looking for young writers that wrote young and hip subjects.
USA Today is also well-known for its national polls on public sentiment.