USA Today

Owned by Gannett, a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and S&P Component. In June 2015 the company split its print assets, which remained under the name Gannett and its broadcast and digital assets that obtained the name of TEGNA. This was done to protect digital assets from a print advertising decline.

In the third quarter of 2015, the company earned $701.2 million, of which $384.1 million was from advertising, a 13 percent decline on the previous year, and $265.2 million was from circulation.

The paper has been trying to boost circulation by inserting its national and international news sections into Gannett’s local daily papers. It also gains money through advertiser-supplied and USA Today-printed inserts.

USA Today was launched in September 1982. Distributed across 50 US states, as well as having an outreach abroad, the newspaper provides easy-to-comprehend stories, covering general news, politics, economics, sport, lifestyle and technology. It determines its mission as reflecting «the pulse of the nation.»

USA Today tops the list of America’s most printed newspapers with total average circulation of 3,255,157 copies. It is offered at newsstands for $2 and provided for free at hotels, airports and other public places. The newspaper went online in 1995. As of July 2015, USA Today sites had nearly 80 million unique visitors and 917 million page views.

Bill Sternberg, editorial page editor, took this position in June 2015, succeeding Brian Gallagher who was in charge of this page for over a decade.

Before joining the opinion page in 2004 as a deputy, Sternberg was a senior assignment editor in charge of Washington and world coverage. He joined USA Today in 1997. Sternberg is in charge of assigning, writing and editing debates and editorials. USA Today’s editorial pieces mostly include articles with a liberal bias, criticizing the GOP. However, at the height of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, its editorials were critical of her political baggage.

Callaway has been editor-in-chief of USA Today since July 2012, after over a decade at MartketWatch. His previous journalism experience includes working as a London correspondent for Bloomberg. In 2001, Callaway was named one of the 100 most-influential business journalists in the US by the Journal of Financial Reporters. In spring 2015, Callaway had to fend off allegations that talent is leaving USA Today as the outlet strives to catch up with its competitors in the digital world.

An award-winning journalist and Washington Bureau chief, Page joined USA Today in 1995 as White House correspondent. She has interviewed eight presidents of the USA and the 2016 election campaign will be the ninth she’s covered. In 2014, she harshly criticized the Obama administration for curbing the press.

«This administration has been more restrictive and more challenging to the press, more dangerous to the press, really, than any administration in American history,» Page said. «I think access to the White House has just gotten worse and worse.»

Page is a frequent guest on different cable news networks as an analyst.

Reporter Tom Frank was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist in explanatory reporting for «his sharply focused exploration of inflated pensions for state and local employees, enhancing stories with graphic material to show how state legislators pump up retirement benefits in creative but unconscionable ways.»

Reporter Jack Kelley, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist for beat reporting, was forced to resign after a seven-week investigation by USA Today found «strong evidence» that the star journalist had «fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major stories, lifted nearly two dozen quotes or other material from competing publications, lied in speeches he gave for the newspaper and conspired to mislead those investigating his work,» throughout his 21-year career, the paper acknowledged in 2004. Four of the articles included in the 2002 Pulitzer entry were among those that contained false information. «A story was considered fabricated if expense reports, phone records, official documents or witnesses clearly contradicted all or parts of what was published, and if Kelley’s explanations failed to reconcile those contradictions,» USA Today said. Kelley admitted to conspiring with a translator to mislead editors, and said in a statement that he made «a number of serious mistakes that violate the values most important to» him.

In 1994, Thomas J. Farrell, president of Gannett New Media Group and chairman of USA Today Sky Radio, was put on administrative leave and subsequently resigned his position as a director of a New York savings bank after being accused of insider trading for tipping off friends about a pending merger involving the bank. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for one count of securities fraud for the scheme, the lightest sentence possible.

During the 2013 round of layoffs, the LA Times let go its only art reporter, Jori Finkel. Over a dozen art museum directors from across Southern California wrote created a Change.org petition to have her reinstated, leading LA Weekly to call the journalist "LA’s most wanted woman." The paper did not change its decision, and wrote in a statement, "As a policy, we do not discuss employee relations, but our commitment to intelligent and illuminating reporting of arts and culture in Southern California is in no way diminished. We devote more staff resources to the arts than almost any other general news organization in the country."

Gannett has purchased Journal Media Group, which owns 15 daily newspapers, 18 weeklies and their websites in 14 US markets, for just $280 million. After the deal is to be finalized in early 2016, Gannett «will have a media outlet in 106 local markets in the US,» according to USA Today’s report. The company is expecting its digital audience to reach more than 100 million unique visitors a month and its circulation to rise by about 675,000 weekdays and 950,000 Sundays. Commenting on the deal, Gannett’s Chief Executive Robert Dickey emphasized «the importance of expanding our local market footprint.»

However, some have expressed concern over such expansion. For instance, in Tennessee «three of the state’s four-largest newspapers are owned by the same company.»

«What happens now with Gannett is the same story across [all the] newspapers it owns. It’s called the 20 percent rule. The truth is they have to generate 20 percent profit every year from every newspaper that is owned in order to make sure the stock grows in value,» MTSU journalism Professor Ed Kimbrell told the Ledger, a Tennessee newspaper belonging to the Daily News Publishing Co. «And when that is true, suddenly reporters go, suddenly features replace [news], and suddenly there are very large photographs. The number of reporters will decline. And it is the Gannett story all over the country.»