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Essay Usa Today Case Study

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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

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