By Jeremy Lott on 5.21.02 @ 12:02AM
It's no longer the New York Times.
For all the ink that the Gray Lady generates, pro and con, and
for all of the television news stories that she inspires, many
non-media watchers would be surprised, if not shocked, to learn
that the New York Times is far from the king of the jungle
when it comes to newspaper circulation. With an average of 1.19
million daily copies, she is only the third ranking daily newspaper
in the U.S., behind the Wall Street Journal (1.82 million)
and, in first place, USA Today (2.21 million).
Granted, there are many technical reasons for this large gulf in
circulation between the Times and USA Today. The
newsstand price of the Times is twice that of "the
nation's newspaper." The Times' national distribution
channels are not nearly as well developed. In my small northwest
Washington hometown of Lynden (population hovering around 10,000),
I've spotted at least a dozen places where readers can pick up a
copy of USA Today. If they want the Times, they
have to drive a half-hour to the nearest large city. Many critics
have derisively dismissed Al Neuharth's enterprise as "McPaper" for
being distributed at every McDonald's in the U.S., but there are a
lot of McDonald's in the U.S.
But the gulf between the two dailies is as much philosophical as
it is technical. Where the New York Times, with its
well-worn motto/boast "All the News That's Fit to Print," is
self-consciously elitist and aimed at a narrow affluent niche
audience, USA Today is, in the words of one media critic,
"the daily channeler of the common zeitgeist." In plain English,
USA Today is the paper for people who want a daily shot of
news, opinion and entertainment with that coffee and sausage
McMuffin, or who want to get a quick summary of what's going on in
the world -- or check sports scores or get a preview of what's in
theaters that weekend -- over lunch.
That common usage may not make USA Today a great
newspaper, in some ideal Platonic sense, but it sure does make it a
good one. While the concept of "news you can use" can be taken too
far, it's nice to have a newspaper that you can use -- one
that prizes brevity, functionality and simplicity of design over
the longwinded disarray of some of its competitors.
To prove my case, it might be helpful to make a partial list of
things that "the nation's newspaper" does right. It does sports
well. It discontinues features that people aren't interested in
(e.g. Larry King's unreadable column). The "trend" stories (e.g.
"Americans change priorities in wake of bombings") are often
interesting. The editorials are eclectic and somewhat centrist but
mostly free of leftish cant: To wit, lately, they've taken to
arguing for more choice and flexibility in education, including
backing the push for single sex public schools. The letters page is
well put together and airs a marvelous diversity of views.
Scientific breakthroughs and technological developments are covered
with the gee whiz excitement that they deserve: A recent cover
story featured findings on a first generation bionic eye, complete
with diagram. Most importantly, more often than not USA
Today gets the story right on the money in a way that more
spin-obsessed newspapers simply cannot. A recent cover story on
this president's predecessors' meddling featured the following
subtitle: "Carter, Clinton offer their help but Bush would prefer
that his predecessors butt out of his foreign policy."
Hear hear.
One Very Big Story that USA Today has been getting
right is the War on Terror. A December William Powers column
in the National Journal accurately argued that "it has
been on top of this war like nobody else." It was USA
Today that first reported the early presence of commando
troops in Afghanistan, USA Today that almost had one of
its reporters (Jack Kelly) blown up in a suicide bombing in Israel
and, yes, USA Today that reported slow but steady military
successes last fall when less competent papers were hopelessly
rending their garments over the forthcoming quagmire.
Powers labeled USA Today's coverage "the biggest
[media] success story of the war." Said coverage had "brought to
the story a clarity and a focus that have been lacking in other
national media, at a time when clarity and focus are exactly what's
needed. … [I]t's as if this media outfit was built for
exactly this story at this time -- one of those rare, perfect
matches between a journalistic enterprise and its age."
He was right, but Powers may have been too cautious in his
assessment. At a time when trust in the media is at an all time
low, people are turning to a variety of sources that they believe
represent the "straight goods" about what's going on in the world;
witness the rise of the bloggosphere. But witness also the
phenomenal selling power of USA Today, and realize that
the two are related.
In fact, if the nation's newspaper continues in its current
trajectory, some smart aleck may eventually declare in name what
has been true in fact for some time now: that the new newspaper of
record isn't nearly as stuffy as the old one.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Education, Television, Sports, Military, Israel
