Birthday greetings to...a newspaper?!
Sep. 14th, 2007 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunYep, you read right; tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of USA Today's first issue hitting the streets (only those in DC/Baltimore and environs, initially; it was rolled out in other cities as the months went by). The first attempt at an explicitly national newspaper in the nation's history (The New York Times and Washington Post are only "national" in a de facto sense; their stated beat is still local), it was derided widely as a homogenizing "McPaper" for its short-attention-span reporting, consciously geared to a generation raised on TV, and its abundance of color photos and info-graphics. Even Garry Trudeau made fun of it in his Doonesbury strip, early on; now a lot of those early critics have had to dine on a healthy helping of crow, as one major daily after another has begun copying these features.
As a newspaper junkie since roughly the age of two (no lie; my late mother loved recounting how I would sound out sentences from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser phonetically as I learned to read) and a student journalist in high school and college, I find this significant news—"meta-news," as today's media-studies academic types might put it. I had had no clue this occasion was nearing until I went to lunch today and spotted the paper's special anniversary edition for sale in the restaurant; naturally, I snapped up a copy. When lunch was ready, I stuffed my face and read avidly the paper's "package" of commemorative features, including a timeline of events in the rag's history...and that of the nation it covered. They even note the reporter of theirs who got caught fabricating elements of some 20 stories he filed; kudos to the current editors for being willing to do a warts-and-all outline. (No mention of the paper's failed foray into television, USA Today: The Television Series, broadcast all too briefly in syndication in 1989, however, so I'll have to deduct a kudo or two.)
More kudos for holding the line admirably on pricing; the cover price has only increased threefold from its original 25 cents, which is more than most papers can say (granted, USA Today enjoys economies of scale very few local papers other than the two named above do, which helps hold down costs). And while it can be argued that their short-'n'-snappy prose style encourages less tolerance for the longer-form, in-depth reporting that used to be a key value of the medium, economic as well as cultural pressures have left their mark on other papers as well.
What were you doing on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1982? (I was about two weeks into my second year at Louisiana State University's Baton Rouge home campus, having finished my first year, or "Junior Division" as they called it back then, back in May.) And what effect(s), salutary or otherwise, do you believe USA Today's advent has had on journalism in general and newspapers in particular? My own verdict: mixed (raising the bar for readability and visual design, demerits for lack of depth and laxity in fact-checking).
As a newspaper junkie since roughly the age of two (no lie; my late mother loved recounting how I would sound out sentences from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser phonetically as I learned to read) and a student journalist in high school and college, I find this significant news—"meta-news," as today's media-studies academic types might put it. I had had no clue this occasion was nearing until I went to lunch today and spotted the paper's special anniversary edition for sale in the restaurant; naturally, I snapped up a copy. When lunch was ready, I stuffed my face and read avidly the paper's "package" of commemorative features, including a timeline of events in the rag's history...and that of the nation it covered. They even note the reporter of theirs who got caught fabricating elements of some 20 stories he filed; kudos to the current editors for being willing to do a warts-and-all outline. (No mention of the paper's failed foray into television, USA Today: The Television Series, broadcast all too briefly in syndication in 1989, however, so I'll have to deduct a kudo or two.)
More kudos for holding the line admirably on pricing; the cover price has only increased threefold from its original 25 cents, which is more than most papers can say (granted, USA Today enjoys economies of scale very few local papers other than the two named above do, which helps hold down costs). And while it can be argued that their short-'n'-snappy prose style encourages less tolerance for the longer-form, in-depth reporting that used to be a key value of the medium, economic as well as cultural pressures have left their mark on other papers as well.
What were you doing on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1982? (I was about two weeks into my second year at Louisiana State University's Baton Rouge home campus, having finished my first year, or "Junior Division" as they called it back then, back in May.) And what effect(s), salutary or otherwise, do you believe USA Today's advent has had on journalism in general and newspapers in particular? My own verdict: mixed (raising the bar for readability and visual design, demerits for lack of depth and laxity in fact-checking).
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Date: 2007-09-14 07:19 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what effect USAT has had on journalism, but I do like being given a journalistic known quantity at hotels where I stay across the country. I can count on getting world and national news from it, unlike what you get from many local papers.
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Date: 2007-09-14 09:08 pm (UTC)