USA Today
American national daily newspaper
USA Today (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from USA Today Co.'s corporate headquarters in New York City. Its publication is printed across 37 locations in the U.S. and five additional facilities around the world. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, Colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.
As of 2026, USA Today attracts more than 134 million monthly website visits. It has the fourth largest print circulation in the United States, with 89,200 print subscribers. The newspaper is distributed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the Pacific islands.
History
20th century
USA Today was first conceived on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project nn" met with the then-chairman of Gannett, Al Neuharth, in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Early regional prototypes of USA Today included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper that Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication.
“USA Today” enters the record as american national daily newspaper. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Today, American and national can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“USA Today” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Today, American and national provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39681. VIAF identifies the subject as 185592886. The Library of Congress control number is no98023753. 6 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1982, 2026 and 1981.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “USA Today”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow USA Today primary sources, USA Today archive and Today research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “USA Today” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.