WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Al Neuharth was right.

United States business travelers need a Monday to Friday national newspaper.

So he founded in 1982 USA Today.

The Last Big Idea in the USA newspaper market.

A brilliant idea.

A newspaper that includes the only national sports paper of the country.

An edited quality newspaper for readers with limited time to read.

Full color.

“The only European style newspaper with short pagination published in the USA”, as I said many years ago.

Now they bad news:

They are cutting 10% of the staff.

It seems to me that the current staff number (1,300 people) shows that USA Today is not anymore the lean newspaper that started with the smart loaning program sharing resources from the Gannett chain.

It was a newspaper for a mobile audience.

So this is the newspaper of the future.

The Next Big Idea is a mobile newspaper for a mobile audience that mix international, national and hyper-local content.

As the founder of Williams-Sonoma likes to say:

“We don’t need to change. We need to do it better”.

Ed Baig is bold and direct: IT’S A WINNER.

The review of USA Today personal technologies editor starts with this:

“It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of.”

And ends with this:

“Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there’s certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.”

WOW!

This is not the politically correct David Pogue’s approach.

This is a review for you and me.

The users.

Not the critics.

The buyers.

Not the experts.

The consumers.

Not the competitors.

Watch here the USA Today video-review by Jefferson Graham.

AFP reports:

The Wall Street Journal said Saturday that it expects to become the largest US newspaper by weekday circulation when the latest figures are released, leapfrogging USA Today.

According to Editor and Publisher magazine, Audit Bureau of Circulations figures to be published on October 26 will show that USA Today’s circulation fell 17 percent to 1.88 million for the six months ending in September.

The Journal, with a total circulation of just over two million, said that would make the News Corp.-owned newspaper the largest in the country by weekday circulation

USA Today would still remain number one in terms of total print circulation because the Journal’s total circulation includes nearly 356,000 subscribers to its website, it said.

(Murdoch by Vince Natale/NYT)