USA Today: The Decline Of The Newspaper Industry

USA Today has always faced challenges and opportunities. There are several challenges have affected USA Today. The newspaper has been in the adapt quick or die stage for quite some time. Most businesses in today’s economy are facing power shifts to customers, massive increase in product selection, shifting demand patterns, and privacy, security, and ethical concerns (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). USA Today’s biggest challenges are shifting demand patterns, changing demographic of readers, competition, distribution, production costs, and technological advances, but within these challenges there are great opportunities.

Tom and the USA today team faced a new rapidly developing internet information boom. News was not just becoming accessed more by digital sources, but it was being created or changed into digital sources of information. The internet had created, in the context of the news industry, a disruptive outlet to the newspaper production, sales, and distribution. Whole new infrastructures and business strategy focused on web design, rapid information updates, media outlets, and becoming more up to date with the current technological trends in news, information, and communications. With that, Tom realized that the business expand and use its core competencies in content distribution into three formats, which would allow USA today to impact different market segments with one of three particular product/service changes. With the new divisions, the overall strategy would need to become more ambidextrous to guide and coordinate the branches under a single

In the following essays The Decline of Newspapers Is Bad for the US by Laura Finley and A Battle of the Brands: A Newspaper War in New Orleans by Roger Yu, you will learn why newspapers are imortant to the community. They mean more to people than what you might think, espically the elderly.

USA Today has been a widely successful company. When newspapers were the only form of read news, USA Today cornered the market in the national newspaper arena. As the digital age came about, it was time for change. New companies were emerging as leaders in the online news arena, and even established companies were moving towards online news. USA Today had to move in a different direction. They had to deal with staying ahead, or even with the competition.

An example of USA Today’s relevance in the marketplace was in 1998 when the NBA had a lockout and players refused to play and USA Today used this scenario to modify their newspaper (Stoldt, Smetana & Miller,

Tom Curley, president and CEO of USA Today, realizes that becoming a successful player in the new digital marketplace requires his staffs accept the reality of the digital challenge. However, by February 2000, there is no senior staff members agree Curley’s ideas that transforms USAT from a traditional newspaper business to a news company in the broadest sense. The reason senior staff members disagree is concerning that Online will become a treat to their future.

In summary, despite all the obstacles USA Today has encountered they have survived the cultural changes and demands of their customers. While other company’s close their doors because they are unable to transform, or keep up with technology USA Today continues to keep it customers all while generating and collaborating with businesses to maintain as the top newspaper seller. Bland or not, USA Today has climbed in circulation from no place to 2nd place right behind The Wall Street Journal (Ludlow,

Problem Statement: The advent of internet brought about both challenges and opportunities for the newspaper industry. On one hand, it required redesigning a new product suited for online customers and on the other it was an opportunity to reach to 123 million potential customers in this category. Thus to keep up with the pace of emerging digitization in every field, like all newspapers, New York Times also added online reading in their product portfolio. However it only worsened the crisis the newspaper was already going through. The operating profit declined by more than 76% from 234Mn$ in 2010 to a mere 57Mn$ in 2011. The circulations were steadily declining and the new online advertising could not compensate for print advertising

However, to continue to be on the top USA Today must continue to set itself apart from its competitors. Not an easy task considering that less and less consumers are buying papers and looking for online news to be free formats (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014).

There are a number of opportunities and challenges in today’s economy, that has an affect and still is affecting USA Today. Marketers are no longer able to control and manipulate their customers as they once did in the past. USA today is one of the largest print newspapers read, however, their is a decline in of printed readerships (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014).

USA Today is one of the largest print newspapers, even today due to its innovative approach and format that it utilizes. Furthermore, this newspaper contains many features that fully engage its audience by offering colorful displays, short write ups, radiant exhibits of diagrams. One of the overall aspects of USA Today was the manner in which it fully engaged readers with its content than any other newspapers. USA Today is essentially known for its short stories, bright colors and its weather map. Moreover, it is becoming a serious newspaper in which people are beginning to notice more despite how it was ridiculed and thought as a humorous newspaper. Furthermore, it was a newspaper that was highly criticized and constantly under attack for the manner in which it was laid out. Nonetheless, no one took the paper seriously then. USA Today has become a much stronger news product that has increased its marketing efforts and shown the world that it certainly has had an impact on other newspapers in the manner in which they chose to model some of the very same ideas as USA Today, however, by other newspapers imitating what they coined as the less admirable newspaper with many gimmicks, flourishing color, and short stories, many other newspapers modeled only to fail after copying many of USA Today’s attributes that are landing them ahead of many other newspapers. Furthermore, many of the papers have taken and used USA Today’s unimportant ideas and are consistently losing out on

The New York Times has a strong brand presence, name and equity in the United States. According to Michael Hirschorn, contributing editor at the Atlantic, “You really can trace almost any major story these days to something that originally appeared in The Times. The problem is that once it reaches the public, they may not even know it came from The Times.” Readers of The New York Times are extremely loyal as well. A daily issue is priced at $2.50 compared to $2.00 for the Wall Street Journal and $1.00 for USA Today. In addition, within nine months, 390,000 consumers have subscribed to www.nytimes.com for a premium price of approximately $4.00 a week [Table B] and 70% of print subscribers have taken

There are two possible ways for the online newspaper to make money (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). The first being USA Today can charge a fee for their App (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). Second, advertising, like USA Today did in the past by offering six months of free advertising with a paid six months of advertising (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). USA Today could offer content topic providers front page one inch blocks for one day a week advertising (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). Distribution and promotion are the third and fourth steps, how to market the online newspaper to readers of all ethnicities, and genders (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). What better way to promote an online newspaper to varies readers than to use social media as an outlet (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). The website HootSuite can help USA Today manage their social media accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (Hendrick, 2016). HootSuite can provide insight into which post resonate with target populations (Hendrick, 2016).

This research has been conducted due to the fact that some researchers have claimed that “journalism is dying” whilst others have argued that “journalism is not dying but is simply evolving” (Blatchford: 2014). This has been a much contested debate triggered by the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources i.e. newspapers, television and radio together with the technological advances of the internet and social media (Cub Reporters: 2010). This has raised many questions and firstly, this dissertation will assess whether the rise of social media has led to the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources. Secondly, this paper will look at what the advantages and disadvantages of using social media as a news distributor are for professional journalists and the general public. Lastly, this study aims to investigate

The rapid expansion of the Internet has brought rise to online social media mechanisms such as user generated content systems. Many traditional media companies are struggling to transition from print to online mediums. One of the challenges is that building a sustainable online news model requires a significant investment in time, resources, and funding. One example of a traditional media company that has succeeded in this transition by focusing on electronic viewing through high-quality product design, is the Washington Post. Initially the Washington Post experienced annual losses of over $100 million to build out its web infrastructure in the late 1990s (Busswood, 2010). Now, through the global reach of the Internet, over 83% of the Washington Post readers come from national and international markets (Kuttner, 2007). This is significant given that a majority of its traditional print readers were primarily within a local geographic area. Many print media companies are scrambling to transition from print to online news models in a desperate attempt to sustain their businesses. However, they lack the time, resources, and funding to replicate on the success of the Washington Post through