Founder saw USA Today become largest U.S. paper
Gannett chief proved naysayers wrong as ‘Mcpaper’ became 1990s success story
who were non-readers. We thought they were getting enough serious stuff in classes,” Neuharth said in 1995. “We hooked them primarily because it was a colourful newspaper that played up the things they were interested in — sports, entertainment and TV.”
USA Today was unlike any newspaper before it when it debuted in 1982. Its style was widely derided but later widely imitated. Many news veterans gave it few chances for survival. Advertisers were at first reluctant to place their money in a newspaper that might compete with local dailies. But circulation grew. In 1999, USA Today edged past The Wall Street Journal in circulation with 1.75 million daily copies, to take the title of the biggest U.S. newspaper.
“Everybody was skeptical and so was I, but I said you never bet against Neuharth,” the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham said in 2000.
The launch of USA Today was Neuharth’s most visible undertaking during more than 15 years as chairman and CEO of the Gannett Co. During his helm, Gannett became the largest U.S. newspaper company and the company’s annual revenues increased from $200 million to more than $3 billion. Neuharth became CEO of the company in 1973 and chairman in 1979. He retired in 1989.
Neuharth loved making the deal. Even more so, the driven media mogul loved toying with and trumping his competitors in deal-making. In his autobiography, Confessions of an S.O.B., Neuharth made no secret of his hard-nosed business tactics, such as taking advantage of a competitor’s conversation he overheard.
Neuharth was proud of his record in bringing more minorities and women into Gannett newsrooms and the board of directors. When he became CEO, the company’s board was all white and male. By the time he retired, the board had four women, two blacks and one Asian. He also pushed Graham to become the first female chairman of the American Newspaper Publishers Association.
Before joining Gannett, Neuharth rose up through the ranks of Knight Newspapers. He went from reporter to assistant managing editor at The Miami Herald in the 1950s and then became assistant executive editor at the Detroit Free Press.
Allen H. Neuharth was born March 22, 1924, in Eureka, S.D. His father died when he was two. He grew up poor but ambitious in Alpena, S.D., and had journalism in his blood from an early start. At age 11, he took his first job as a newspaper carrier and later as a teenager he worked in the composing room of the weekly Alpena Journal.
“I wanted to get rich and famous no matter where it was,” Neuharth said in a 1999 interview. “I got lucky. Luck is very much a part of it. You have to be at the right place at the right time and pick the right place at the right time.”
After earning a bronze star in the Second World War and graduating with a journalism degree from the University of South Dakota, Neuharth worked for the AP for two years. He then launched a South Dakota sports weekly tabloid, SoDak Sports, in 1952. It was a spectacular failure, losing $50,000, but it was perhaps the best education Neuharth ever received.
“Everyone should fail in a big way at least once before they’re forty,” he said in his autobiography. “The bigger you fail, the bigger you’re likely to succeed later.”
After he retired from Gannett, Neuharth, who married three times, continued to write Plain Talk, a weekly column for USA Today.
He also founded the The Freedom Forum, a foundation dedicated to free press and free speech that holds journalism conferences, offers fellowships and provides training. It was begun in 1991 as a successor to the Gannett Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm.
Neuharth put the Freedom Forum on the map with Newseum, an interactive museum to show visitors how news is covered.
In a 2007 interview, Neuharth was asked about the future of printed newspapers amid the upheavals of the news business.
“The only thing we can assume is that consumers of news and information will continue to want more as the world continues to become one global village,” he said. “The question is how much will be distributed in print, online and on the air.
“I don’t know how much will be delivered on newsprint. Some will be delivered by means we can’t even think of yet.”