USA Today Founder Neuharth Dies at 89
April 22, 2013 Leave a comment
April 19, 2013, 9:09 p.m. ET
AL NEUHARTH 1924-2013
USA Today Founder Neuharth Dies at 89
Al Neuharth was an irascible and ambitious newspaper baron who founded USA Today, at one time the largest-circulation daily paper in the country and still the largest in print.
Al Neuharth, shown in 2003, founded USA Today in 1982 with the idea of creating a national-circulation daily filled with bite-sized stories.
Mr. Neuharth, who died Friday in Cocoa Beach, Fla., at age 89, was the longtime chairman and chief executive of Gannett Co., a chain of local newspapers that he transformed into a diversified media conglomerate by his retirement in 1989. Mr. Neuharth founded USA Today in 1982 with the idea of creating a national-circulation daily filled with bite-sized stories. Though derided in some publishing circles at its founding, USA Today not only found a big audience but also became widely influential with its color photographs and infographics that included a vivid national weather map. A native of Eureka, S.D., Mr. Neuharth edited his high-school and college newspapers and held editing jobs at newspapers in Miami and Detroit before going to work for Gannett in 1963. He also was founder of the Newseum, the Washington, D.C., museum of the history of journalism.
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