Monday, February 14, 2011

USA Today On The Fritz?

An article today in Minn Post by John Reinan suggests that USA Today's days may be numbered. Reinan draws this inference from a posting on 'Gannett Blog' (run by former USA Today editor Jim Hopkins) - though I haven't been able to find the specific post to which he's referring. According to Reinan, Gannett is considering ridding itself of its most famous newspaper, trying to sell it or spin off USA Today as an independent company.

USA Today's circulation has been dropping and its newsroom has been cut down drastically, but this is an industry-wide phenomenon. It seems uncertain to me whether USA Today's demise is very near. Nonetheless, Reinan makes an interesting analogy saying that the internet is killing USA Today in the same way television killed Life Magazine. While there are many ways to complicate these links, it's worth thinking about USA Today specifically as a form of journalism that prefigured a kind journalism that has been heavily invested in and promoted on the internet. Much of the discussion about online news has focused citizen journalism and interactive news, but as important to many web-based news outlets has been an effort to realize the dream of the kind of market-driven journalism that USA Today epitomized. Many web news sites are created to be easily scanable, nuggetized, and calculated to satisfy the perceived preferences of their visitors. Throw in a little news of the weird, a heavy dose of sports, and some entertainment - you've got the USA Today vision all over the internet.