USA · Bias: Center
Gannett
Launched in 1982 by Gannett's Al Neuharth, USA Today was built to be read in hotel lobbies and airports: short stories, big color graphics, a weather map people genuinely loved. Critics sneered 'McPaper' — journalism as fast food — right up until every broadsheet in America quietly copied its design. Its owner Gannett is the largest newspaper chain in the US and also the industry's most notorious cost-cutter, running hundreds of hollowed-out local papers alongside the flagship.
In 2022, an internal audit found that reporter Gabriela Miranda had fabricated quotes and invented sources — including people who didn't exist — across her work. USA Today retracted 23 articles in one sweep, one of the largest single retractions by a major US paper this century. To its credit, the paper caught it, investigated it, and published the damage itself. That's the uncomfortable duality of USA Today: a newsroom stretched thin enough for that to happen, and still professional enough to own it in public.
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