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USA Today's market is attractive enough so that both the Times and the Wall Street Journal have launched initiatives to appeal to a broader national audience--initiatives that include such USA Today--esque features as weekend travel and leisure sections and color, color, color. (National newspapers also compete for advertisers with newsweekly magazines like TIME.) Media analysts, however, generally do not see these moves--or the Times's woes--affecting USA Today's business for good or bad. "I really view the market [for each paper] as very separate," says Doug Arthur, publishing analyst at Morgan Stanley. Says Calabrese: "Frankly, as they say, the New York Times doesn't play as well in Peoria as USA Today does."
And USA Today may never play as well on Park Avenue. It is not the erudite, exhaustive--sometimes exhausting--Times, but neither is it trying to be, any more than CNN Headline News is trying to be the PBS News Hour. And for all the praise USA Today has got for its longer investigative stories--that is, for being like "respectable" newspapers--reaffirming its commitment to accessible news is just as laudable. The paper helped broaden the definition of news beyond the preoccupations of elites: the lead story in its Money section is more likely to be about rising cable rates than about the latest deal struck by a cable corporation, and it doesn't look down on readers who want to read about new food-labeling regulations before, say, the U.S. stance on Liberia. Granted, the paper still sometimes runs ditsy articles that seem like parodies out of the Onion. For instance, last Monday it ran strong investigations of the undercovered Bush nuclear-weapons policy and of how budget cutbacks may have been a factor in the space-shuttle disaster--but also a feature asking blond lawyers the burning question, Is Legally Blonde 2 true to life? (Answer: It totally is, kind of!) But in general, USA Today does better than ever a hard thing that looks easy--making news brief but not dumb--through efficient, informed stories that lay out the facts without calling attention to themselves.
Not calling attention to oneself is something of an institutional trait at USA Today, for better and worse. The paper hasn't cultivated many star columnists or strong editorial voices, which can help give a paper an identity. The fact that many staffers, like Jurgensen, remember the paper's tentative early days helps it maintain an underdog attitude even now. But while modesty is nice, confidence--oh, let's just call it arrogance--is what makes people dream big and reach high. Competent, reliable USA Today may have become a good newspaper by trading off the swagger that makes a great newspaper. Of course, as the Times's recent experience has shown, there's a case to be made for quiet toil. At least in this sense, for one big yet oft overlooked newspaper, no news really is good news. --With reporting by Andrea Sachs/McLean, Va., and Amanda Bower/New York