USA Today--What About Tomorrow?

Image via WikipediaCiting rumblings on the Gannett Blog, the Minnesota Post Web site today is reporting that media giant Gannett Company may be looking to unload its flagship national daily, USA Today, or spin the paper off as a separate entity.

Once the nation's largest circulation daily, USA Today's readership has plunged 20 percent over the past decade to 1.8 million readers, from 2.3 million.  Compounding the bad news is an equally precipitous drop in ad pages to 680 in the Fourth Quarter of 2010, compared to 1,045 ad pages during the Fourth Quarter in 2007.

The shrinking editorial staff and the diminished size of the daily have been chronicled by this blog over the past year. (See "TUOL" posts 11/16/10, 8/27/10, 6/24/10 and 2/12/10.)