Are Phoenix and Honolulu next

I'll never understand why they love it. It's such a shoddy product on so many levels, I can't even look at it.

 

i'll be honest. i love it when i'm in a hotel because i don't want to read more than 10 inches and look at pretty charts while i'm getting ready to storm disneyland for 14 hours.

 

Because it accomplishes its purpose. Whether you are in Yuma, Ariz., or Fayetteville, N.C., you can pick it up and actually find out what went on in the world yesterday. There is no provincial bias, no stories or features on the "local" person whom you do not care anything about. If an event ends late at night, they will have the result.

For all its faults, it knows what it wants to be and has not strayed very far from that over the years. My paper is a schizophrenic that doesn't know what it wants to be (although "irrelevant" is currently the leader in the clubhouse).

 

I love USA Today. I can read entire paper (more or less) in about an hour and feel like I have a decent idea what's going on. Hell, you can read entire stories while at a red light.

I don't look at is as journalism. I look at it as the journalism equivalent of the ESPN ticker.

 

They said the papers they might be looking to do this at are

Louisville
Cincinnati
One of the Gannett papers in NY (The one where O'Connor used to work)
One of the bigger papers in Wisconsin.
Honolulu

I'm now being told that Phoenix, Indy, and Nashville likely won't be part of it.

 

If I'm at one of those Gannett papers, I'd be scared shitless.

 

For sports, USA Today has a little good-old-days Sporting News feel, with notes about each team in its primary season. It's an easy way to get a nugget about a team or player without pounding through links online.

 

I've also heard that they are considering the wrap to be a supplement to the daily paper. Take the wrap and plug in the biggest local stories that day, reefers to everything else and still have the daily paper.
My understanding is they are trying to wiggle around some ABC rules and use the wrap to prop up sagging circ numbers.

 

Considering how much money it would save them, it wouldn't surprise me if it happens.

It is Gannett after all.

 

This actually has potential for a good idea - if Gannett would play a little offense instead of defense. Instead of cannibalizing the local papers you already own, why not try these little 4-page wraps in markets where you don't have a local, say Atlanta or Dallas or San Francisco?

 

That's true, but I dont think fans are satisfied with one little nugget. Nine out of 10, I think, will go to the internet everytime. The only people I ever see reading USA Today are in hotels and airports.

 

Oh, this is very bad.