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Path: utzoo!watmath!watrose!jmsellens
From: jmsellens@watrose.UUCP (John M Sellens)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: USA Today
Message-ID: <6655@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Mar-84 18:53:12 EST
Article-I.D.: watrose.6655
Posted: Wed Mar 28 18:53:12 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Mar-84 05:40:00 EST
References: <3596@utcsrgv.UUCP>, <260@deepthot.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 34

From Esquire/February, 1984 pg. 91:

"USA Today, Our Paper" by Richard M. Levine

"Gannett (the publisher) had spent millions asking potential readers what
they wanted in a national newspaper and test-marketing up to eleven
prototypes.  What it found was that readers wanted more sports and weather,
less world and Washington news.  They wanted color (sic) pictures, shorter
stories, and unadorned writing about matters that would affect their lives
immediately, preferably for the better.  They wanted, in short,
television -- not just reporting on television, although that too, but a
newspaper that reads like television looks.

   "Placed in newspaper vending machines designed to look like television
sets, USA Today's front page becomes a frozen TV screen that must offer
something for everyone ...

   "However oxymoronic it may sound, trivia matters in USA Today. ... At
times USA Today appears to be more compiled than written, with information
"bulletized" (a favorite staff neologism) into discrete "factoids"
(another) ...  Stories are written in a uniform see-Spot-run style
intended to convey supplemental information to a busy reader who is
assumed to be short on attention, long on color (sic) TV, and often on the
move.  Even USA Today's staffers agree it's a "McPaper", ... that provides
"McNuggets" of news.  (Or as editor John Quinn put it more philosophically,
"Life is a lot of little paragraphs.")  My guess is that the paper's first
Pulitzer will be won by the librarian."



My question is:  who reads this shi*t?  And why do they have a USA Today
box outside the Kitchener bus station?

John M Sellens - U of Waterloo - watmath!watrose!jmsellens