American Newspapers: Difference between revisions

 

* ''USA Today'' -- aka McPaper. Famed for its colorful charts and graphs and their sports section's heavy emphasis on college and high school sports polling in association with [[ESPN]], otherwise just a bland collection of wire reports, although it's also the only public outlet where the full weekly [[Nielsen Ratings]] chart is disseminated in any form. Has the highest circulation of any American newspaper, due to its publisher Gannett owning many local papers around the country (some of which also print copies of ''USA Today'') and adding to its aggressive availability; one technique is to convince hotel chains to deliver one free to each room every day. That adds up to a ''lot'' of newspapers.

** Incidentally, one of News Corp/Murdoch's biggest changes to the paper was adding color photographs on the front page.

** The Wall Street Journal has one very important ''feature''. Because any contract where one party pays interest on borrowed money where the interest rate can change must use a third-party to determine what the interest rate should be, with the exception of contracts involving government guarantees, typically any contract (a credit card, a mortgage, a car loan, etc.) will use the current interest rate of either prime rate or the London Interbank Rate (LIBOR) plus a certain percentage amount as published on the last day of the month in the ''Wall Street Journal.'' This means that the WSJ actually has more effect on what several million people pay in interest than the Federal Reserve Bank does.

Not officially national, but two papers with wide-reaching national influence are:

* ''The New York Times'' -- Founded in 1851. Daily read of the East Coast intelligentsia, known as the "Old Grey Lady" (although since they've started printing in color it [[Artifact Title|doesn't make sense anymore]]) and the "Newspaper of Record." Most famous for publishing the "Pentagon Papers," which was a classified government report on how the USA got into and ran the [[Vietnam War]]. The government tried to stop it from being published, but the courts ruled that the government had to show an extreme danger before the press could be stopped from publishing something. No [[Newspaper Comics|comics]], but the best crossword in the nation. The ''Times'' also owns the ''Boston Globe'' newspaper and a stake in the Red Sox. Despite its fame, it's still not recession-proof -- for the first time in history, it now runs ads on the front page. Despite nominally being a New York paper, it is easily available in most parts of the country, if only by being the paper sold at most Starbucks (which also gives a hint as to its readership). A rarity in today's market, the ''Times'' is still a basically a family business, with a majority of shares controlled by the Ochs/Sulzberger family since 1896.

 

These two papers are widely considered to be the top of the journalistic profession in America, and you can expect any young reporter in fiction to dream of working at either one. In general, the ''Times'' does better in reporting international news, as well as arts and culture, while the ''Post'' is considered to be the go-to for political news. Both are often cited as being proof of the "[[Strawman News Media|liberal bias]]" of the press. The accuracy of this accusation is extremely debatable, and many observers vociferously disagree with it. (The ''Times'' has several columnists, such as Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd, who do tend to make conservatives' blood pressure rise; on the other hand, they also boast well-known conservative writers such as Thomas Friedman and the late William Safire, who in addition to his political column wrote a highly-regarded column on the American English language for the Sunday edition for many years. The ''Post'' generally steers a middle line in its editorial coverage, with the results that they irritate conservatives when a Republican president is in power and annoy liberals when a Democrat holds the White House.)

 

Other papers of note:

* ''Chicago Sun-Times'' -- Tabloid, more liberal rival to the ''Tribune''. Notable for film critic [[Roger Ebert]], and being the newspaper in the show ''[[Early Edition (TV)|Early Edition]]''.

* ''The Detroit News'' and the ''Detroit Free Press'' -- Once, every major and many minor American cities were blessed with multiple daily papers; today, Detroit is one of the few "two-paper towns" left. Mainly local and regional stories, plus the sort of focus on the auto industry that the ''Washington Post'' puts on politics or the ''LA Times'' puts on Hollywood. As Detroit has fallen on hard times, so have both papers, and both now only deliver home/office subscriptions towards the tail end of the week, with lighter papers on Monday-Wednesdays only available through retail channels and a heavy emphasis on their websites.

At nearly every college in America, independent student newspapers are published. At the bigger schools, they come out on a Monday-Friday basis during the academic year, with smaller colleges having less frequent publication days. These newspapers do train journalists for professional careers, but are not substitutes for Journalism School educations (though they can be complementary with them). They tend to into run into more free speech issues, due to the pressures of college administrations, hyper-sensitive readerships and unpolished staff. Below them are high school newspapers that include many [[School Newspaper Newshound|school newspaper newshounds]].

 

 

=== A final note ===

[[Category:Print Media Tropes]]

[[Category:American Newspapers]]