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.
USA Today, or USTA was launched in 1982. It was the first daily national newspaper, and offered news regarding every state in the nation. It had both weekly and daily newspapers. Though it started out slow, as the reporting quality increased, so did the advertising and revenue.
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Because the Online version of an article is much different than a paper story, there were no real reporters, but people that had to make a story readable for the online audience.
The differences between the newsroom and the online department caused a significant rift in USTA. Online was still part of USTA, and still had to adhere to the values of the company, yet it was a different beast altogether, and did not exactly fit into the same mold.
Curley, the CEO tried to integrate the newspaper and Online. He left the integration ideas to his senior management team. The attitude of the newspaper was that Online was competition, and that the newspaper did not want to spend more time and resources than needed for Online. As the demand for Online grew, the competition for resources between the departments grew also. Inevitably, there was too much separation between online and the rest of USAT.
Most of the company wanted to spin off Online on its own, while the CEO wanted to keep Online within the USAT family. The Senior Vice President of Online developed it as an independent business unit, while Curley was trying to maintain integration.
One of the critical issues that USAT was dealing with included new entrants into the market. Yahoo.com and AOL were making significant profits on online news without the graphics that USAT had. They also had to contend with other newspapers that were
Lack of overall direction with multiple CEO’s- Over time the CEO of tech depot didn’t know what to do. From so many changes to the company it causes the employees to get out for hand and we threating to quit. Francoli was going to change that introducing the OME to the different part of the company to see how it will do in the different departments and what they can change about it to make it more effective to tech depot.
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
The central issue made reference to in the documentary is the uncertain future of the Times. Other types of media such as Twitter and the internet are causing the Times to appear obsolete. This is evident in that the company’s stock value is the lowest it has been in over 8 years. Additionally, the documentary referenced the fact that the Times is having to lay off a hundred people through a buyout program because of budget issues. This problem is all too familiar in the U.S. economy. It also illustrates the fact that even huge corporations are not immune to the economic distress in the United States.
The first significant step that USA Today took was changing the paper from a 54-inch to a 50-inch width causing the paper to appear cleaner and read/handle easier (Ferrell and Hartline, 2014, p. 316). By using web-width reduction, newspapers can save significant amounts of money by making everything appear narrower rather than eliminating any contents (Astor, 1996). In order to be different, USA Today when against an extremely cherished practice and offered space on
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
Source C is a primary source, it is also a propaganda poster published in 1940 by the Royal Air Force in WW2. This poster is a Government poster which encourages recruitment because they needed more men in the R.A.F. I know this because, the poster includes information about where to sign up and it is strongly worded using persuasive language, command words like “Apply/Write”. I can now infer the purpose of this source, which is to pressurise men to be patriots and defend their country therefore enlisting; this is a propaganda poster that uses the tactic of directed to each individual. From my own knowledge, I know that during WW1 and WW2 there were lots of propaganda posters published, especially for recruitment, to encourage others to do
As the demand for information became higher in the 1700’s, competition between newspapers ensued mainly because of opposing opinions, the reputation of the editorial staff, and their access to credible information. In the early onset of the American Press, newspapers were geared towards the elite members of society, as they were educated and had the means to buy the newspaper weekly. Over time the paper became more widely available and literacy was sky rocketing, resulting in the need to appeal to multiple audiences. The early Colonial Press only consisted of weekly papers, as dailies were not introduced until later on in the 17th century.
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 has been able to differentiate itself and stay away from the commodity status of most news sources. Commoditization is to “render a good or service widely available and interchangeable with one provided by another company” (Merriam-Webster, 2017, Para. 1). Commoditization is everywhere and it is basically results of major markets lacking any differentiation between products and services (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). When products and services are similar customers will only care about price. One reason why the USA Today has been able to differentiate itself and stay away from the commodity status of most new sources is because it has the free availability online that makes itself different from competitors, and the list doesn't stop
USA Today debuted in 1982 as America’s first national general-interest daily newspaper by Allen H. Gannett who was Chairman of Gannett Co., Inc., until 1989 And it achieved rapid success due its innovative format. Now USA Today worth $4.7 billion and Gannett is a global information juggernaut that publishes 82 daily and 700 nondaily newspapers and affiliated websites, together with 23 broadcast television stations in operations reaching 18.2% of the U.S. population. The case provides an overview of Gannett 's strategic marketing approach and its continuous innovations due to changes in the market. Even though USA Today is a national newspaper, it is written in shorter piece and sprinkled with eye catching, colorful photos, charts, and graphs, which are never considered by any other media source and it makes the USA Today’s content refreshing and more engaging than other papers. Due to these reasons, the USA Today’s circulation grew suddenly from roughly 350,000 in 1982 to nearly 5.9 million daily print and online readers today. When comparing USA Today with other competitors like the Wall Street Journal, which has 2.12 million subscriptions and the New York Times, which has 1.58 million subscriptions, the USA Today remains the number one print newspaper and USAToday.com, is one of the top sites for news and information.
Another key way the paper differentiated itself, its paper size. USA Today changed their paper size from 54-inch width to 50-inch width.
This market oriented strategy was the opposite of most other newspapers. They focused more on accomplishing the wishes of the editors and publishers. When the paper was launched, focus groups were gathered to find out how USA Today was read, at home or at work, maybe while you were on the subway or bus. Subsequently,
With rise of CNN, the first 24 Hour News, in the early 1980s continued practice of promotion journalism. But soon
USA Today achieved rapid success due to its innovative format. No other media source had considered a national newspaper written in shorter pieces and sprinkled with eye-catching, colorful photos, graphs and charts. Readers found USA Today’s refreshing and more engaging than other papers.
More community news publications have the ability to take advantage of the additional capabilities of the web for telling stories as a manner of drawing a new and different audience to supplement existing print subscribers. The boundaries between print, broadcast, and online journalism erode online, and the audience appropriated a more