In 1990, George Gladney looked at 230 of the nation's largest dailies to see the influence of USA Today. He determined a score for each paper by looking at five categories: color; pictures and graphics; trivia and fluff; brevity, capsulization and promotion; and complexity and depth. After he determined scores for each paper, he ranked them and divided them into adopters and non-adopters. Even though two papers scored above USA Today, he found that most newspapers had a long way to go before they would look like USA Today. He also found that chain-owned papers tended more to be adopters than non-adopters.This researcher duplicated his study using 34 papers with more than 50,000 daily circulation in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio. Using Gladney's scoring system, the papers were given scores according to certain criteria. Some categories were further divided. The trivia and fluff category was divided into celebrity coverage, sports coverage and weather. The brevity, complexity and depth category was subdivided into text six inches or less and summaries, indices and promotions. The complexity and depth category was divided into lead sentence length and the length of the longest page 1 stories.Newspapers were divided into groups: "adopters" and "non-adopters" of the USA Today style. This study found that eight of the 34 papers were non-adopters and five were adopters.Eight papers scored above USA Today. This study showed that neither the adopter nor the non-adopter group had the majority of the newspapers. USA Today fell in between these groups making it part of the norm.There was a correlation between chain-owned newspapers and adopting the USA Today style. This study did not support Gladney's original conclusion that smallercirculation newspapers tended to be more adopting of the USA Today style. As newspaper circulations decreased, newspaper scores did not increase. Larger newspapers were not more resistant to the USA Today style. / Department of Journalism
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/186991 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Brantley, Rachel Alison |
| Contributors | Popovich, Mark N. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | iii, 72 leaves : charts, facsims. ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-usc-- |
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