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But in the late '80s and '90s, the paper began to run more in-depth, multipage articles and to focus on breaking news rather than just summarizing it. The paper won praise for reporting, such as its investigation into the 1998 Swissair Flight 111 crash. Its Page One news choices became more serious (as opposed to, say, Jan. 5, 1983, when it led with SKIERS SOAR IN WEST, MAKE SNOW IN EAST). The paper, once known as a farm team for other major papers, began poaching reporters from its competition, such as the Washington Post's Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic in 2000. And reporter Jack Kelley last year was a Pulitzer finalist for reporting on terrorism.
By the time Jurgensen took over USA Today, she says, it had become so gray that it was losing its distinctiveness, especially as many print media--not to mention cable news and the Internet--began to ape its colorful, graphics-heavy approach. Today Jurgensen, 54, says her goal is to usher in the third generation of the newspaper, combining the accessibility of the frothy early era with the heft of the gray second era. She points, for instance, to the day's lead story, about troops in Iraq, accompanied by a graphic snaking the length of the column, listing by date U.S. casualties in recent months. She also notes the paper's Market Trends graphic, which uses a 3-D image to indicate whether a stock sector beat or trailed the market, and by how much, over a week, a month and a quarter--an example of a sophisticated visual idea that packs in information that text can't convey well.
USA Today's populism is also reflected in its policy of making sure stories on different subjects include diverse sources--a salient point after the Times scandal, which illustrated the ongoing struggle by newspapers to bring diversity to both their newsrooms and their coverage. (Some charged that Blair was cut too much slack because he was black.) "If you're doing a story on used-car dealers," says Jurgensen, "not all of them are 40-year-old white guys, so find some who aren't." Also germane to the Blair affair--which included his inventing not only details but also quotes from unattributed "anonymous sources"--USA Today once banned, and still strongly discourages, the use of unattributed quotations.
USA Today came to look and read the way it does, however, as much because of its business model as any editorial philosophy. It relies heavily on single-copy sales, which means grabbing attention with color pictures, catchy headlines and, essentially, a mini-summary of the paper's contents on the front page. This also means catering to travelers--hence the extensive sports section and travel-issues coverage. It sells nearly a million copies each day in bulk to hotels, who give them to guests. Hotels pay less than home subscribers, and some critics and competitors have charged that readers may not give as much attention to newspapers (and their ads) they didn't ask for. But media analysts say the attractiveness of the traveler audience--younger and richer than most newspaper readers--outweighs any disadvantage. Amid a poor period for print advertising, says Kevin Calabrese, a media analyst at Argus Research, USA Today "is off a little bit slightly from last year, but it still looks head and shoulders above the competition."