Three Years Old and Counting

By James Kelly

Sitting behind a gleaming, curved desk in his New York City office, Allen Neuharth picks up the day's issue of USA Today, the terse, rainbow-colored newspaper that he created and nurtures. "We stole most of this from somebody else," says Neuharth, chairman of the Gannett Co., parent firm of USA Today. "Most of the content ideas, the packaging, color and graphics are the result of what television and the newsmagazines have been doing for a long time." Leaning back in his chair, Neuharth, 61, turns to the paper's full-page weather map. "This is a direct, absolute steal from Willard Scott and other TV weathermen." Neuharth pauses. "The question is, can you redo it in a way that makes folks want to buy it?"

On the eve of the paper's third birthday next month, that question elicits a mixed answer. USA Today, which appears Monday through Friday, enjoys a circulation of more than 1.3 million, making it the country's third-largest daily.[*] Advertising pages have risen from an average of 6.5 a day for the first six months of 1984 to twelve a day through the first half of 1985. Once ridiculed by journalists across the country as McPaper, the fast-food version of the news, USA Today has been grudgingly accepted in many newsrooms as a different, if not necessarily the best, way of delivering the news.

Neuharth's faith in USA Today can be seen in the redesign of Family Weekly, the Sunday newspaper supplement that Gannett bought from CBS Inc. in March for $42 million. At the time of the sale, Family Weekly had 362 newspaper clients and a combined circulation of more than 12 million. Renamed USA Weekend and scheduled to debut in September, the revamped magazine is a close cousin of the newspaper, complete with the same logo and flashy graphics. Many of Family Weekly's longtime subscribers, however, have complained that the new look amounts to free promotion for USA Today. So far, about 130 of those clients have switched to Parade, boosting the nation's biggest Sunday supplement to 268 papers (circ. 30 million). Gannett officials claim that most of the defectors were small-town publications that will be replaced by fewer but larger city newspapers. "We will end up with pretty much the same circulation but with a better mix of markets," says Ray Gaulke, president of USA Weekend.

USA Today is still not a financial winner. Though officials at Gannett will not divulge figures, Wall Street analysts estimate that the publication has lost about $250 million in pretax dollars. Neuharth has always said that the paper would not become profitable until 1987, but some company officials nonetheless seem a bit dismayed that the flood of red ink might top $350 million.

USA Today faces a critical test on Aug. 26, when the price rises from 35-c- to 50-c-. The last increase, from 25-c- last August, resulted in a temporary drop-off of about 100,000 buyers. Another late-summer decline is expected, and the briskness of both the circulation's recovery and its growth above 1.3 million will determine whether USA Today will survive.

No one can gainsay Neuharth's achievement in bringing about the first telepaper. USA Today is the cross-pollination of print journalism and television, aimed at a generation conditioned to a diet of polychromed, encapsulated news. In its quest to be different, it has redefined the traditional newspaper menu to include far more consumer information, features about trends, poll results and just plain, unadorned facts, all of it served up in easily digested prose. If USA Today has a personality, it is that of the cheerful tipster, giving the best time to buy small cars or where to write for a booklet about veterans' benefits. "We take a much more personal approach to the news," says Publisher Cathleen Black, 41. "We are for busy people who want their news and information like this," she says, snapping her fingers.

USA Today has been gradually refined over the past three years. The paper is still divided into four sections--News, Money, Sports and Life--but the front page of each department boasts more pictures, crisper layouts and a more variegated palette of colors. The Sports pages, crammed with statistics, proved an immediate hit with readers. Money quickly became more consumer oriented, but Life struggled through months of fluff before sharpening its coverage.

The News section remains the untamed beast. From the start, USA Today editors decided to forgo the dutiful, gray Page One display of a traditional newspaper. "That was the easy part," recalls John Quinn, 59, the paper's editor. "But what should we put on instead? That's tough." The ideal mix, in Quinn's opinion, is a banner story across the top that grabs the reader's attention (SUPER HORSE JOHN HENRY PUT TO PASTURE headlined one issue last week). Another story tries to get a jump on the day's events (CHINA'S LI, REAGAN TALK PACTS TODAY). A third piece, dubbed Cover Story, deals in ankle-high depth with a current concern (USA'S 11,871 AIDS VICTIMS WAIT, WORRY).

USA Today editors are acutely aware of the importance of these three stories to sales. Many potential customers buy it from one of more than 100,000 blue-and-white vending machines, where only the top half of the front page is visible. To remind editors of this, boxes are planted throughout the paper's wedge-shaped headquarters in Arlington, Va.

The paper's hallmark remains the factoid, a short fact or statistic that appears halfway into a story to buttress a point or offer an example. Factoids: Appear in clusters. Can be as short as a few words or as long as several paragraphs. Always have this little box.

The factoids, combined with the paper's abundant charts and polls, offer enough addictive minutiae each day to fuel a game of Trivial Pursuit. What is the original name of Falcon Crest? (The Vintage Years); what is America's favorite kind of cheesecake topping? (cherry); which color houses sell best? (yellow).

For the reader with little time or patience, USA Today's brevity is its major asset. Even for those who cluck over the superficial handling of complex issues, the paper has several strengths. USA Today is good at spotting a trend early, whether it is the growing popularity of Tofutti or the rising demand for automobile sunroofs. Its emphasis on American popular culture leads its reporters to explore in telling detail, day after day, such events as Coca-Cola's switches in formula and just about anything to do with Hollywood. The writing style, once derided as pale and plodding, has grown much livelier.

Almost any newspaper editor who is questioned on the influence of USA Today will agree that, yes, it is a force, and will add, "My competition is copying that paper shamelessly." Though some may be loath to admit it, executives at papers ranging from the Minneapolis Star and Tribune to the New York Daily News to the Orlando Sentinel acknowledge that USA Today's sports coverage has led them to beef up their own sections. Many newspapers have sprinkled their front pages with bold colors, expanded their weather maps and added more charts and sidebars. Though most editors contend that their papers were moving in that direction anyway, some acknowledge that USA Today blazed the path. "Editors are now aware that you can get a lot of information into a chart or graph rather than a ten-or 15-inch story," says Larry Tarleton, news managing editor of the Dallas Times Herald. Says Michael Keegan, assistant managing editor for art at the Washington Post: "Its greatest influence is on design. A lot of editors are saying, 'This is good. It's clear. We can do this.' "

Some editors, however, still treat the paper as a leprous intruder. "It's not our kind of journalism," says James Greenfield, an assistant managing editor of the New York Times. Observes Milwaukee Journal Editor Sig Gissler: "The paper tries to appeal to younger readers who might have a shorter attention span."

All editors agree, however, that USA Today has not hurt the circulation of their own papers. Publisher Black is not surprised, since USA Today has never been touted as a replacement for local papers. According to Black, the paper has created a unique audience made up, in part, of those who read hometown papers for local stories and ads but want a comprehensive capsule of national and international news, plus a sizable number of people who were never daily-newspaper buyers until USA Today came along.

When USA Today made its debut, some newspaper executives believed that its format would attract primarily lower-class readers. But surveys by the Simmons Market Research Bureau show that the paper draws many of the young, upscale readers that Madison Avenue covets. Nonetheless, USA Today faces stiff competition from magazines and television for national advertising dollars. Unlike some magazines, USA Today does not offer regional advertising editions targeted for specific audiences. Although advertiser resistance has not been fully overcome, it is easing. "The color and setup of USA Today fairly well guarantees that if someone goes through the newspaper, he is going to see your ad," says Richard Kostyra, media director at J. Walter Thompson, a New York ad agency.

Nonetheless, newspaper-industry experts remain cautious about USA Today's long-term strength. If circulation does not rise substantially over the next two years, the paper will not be able to charge the higher advertising rates that are needed to break into the black. (A full-page, four-color ad now costs $31,000, compared with $75,000 for a black-and-white page in the Wall Street Journal.) "The challenge facing USA Today is to get the circulation to 2 million or above," says John Morton, a newspaper analyst at Lynch, Jones & Ryan, a securities firm in Washington. "Gannett has established there is a market for the paper. Now the question is, is it going to be a market that is profitable?"

Neuharth, of course, is asking himself the same question, but he is determined to see it through. USA Today, after all, is Neuharth's dream. During the paper's first six months, the indefatigable onetime sportswriter for the Mitchell, S.D. Republic stayed every night in the newsroom until 1 or 2 a.m., editing stories and dashing off headlines. Once, when he found a story "too damn long-winded," he banged out a new version on his typewriter.

Though Neuharth no longer haunts the newsroom, he still speaks with Editor Quinn half a dozen times a week. He has enough confidence in the paper to plan the opening of four printing plants by year's end, which will bring the nationwide total to 30. He launched an international edition of USA Today last year (15,000 copies sold a day, in Europe and the Middle East) and plans to increase the newspaper's maximum length from 48 pages to 56 in November. Perhaps most important of all, despite USA Today's substantial losses the Gannett Co. chalked up its 71 st straight quarterly rise in profits last month. Its net profit for 1984 was $224 million.

Even criticism about the paper's approach to the news no longer seems to rankle Neuharth. "Editors who like to write or edit long stories don't like this paper," he says with equanimity. "Notice I didn't say 'like to read' long stories." Ask Neuharth if USA Today is here to stay, and he barely pauses. "If I had to bet the rent money," he says, "I'd bet it." --By James Kelly. Reported by Lawrence Mondi/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by Reported by Lawrence Mondi/New York, with other bureaus