USA Today

A newspaper, printed every weekday, which contains information about the United State of America. The paper is distributed nationwide and, to some degree, worldwide. Costs 50 cents to purchase in the US.

Depite the negative opinions listed above. USA Today is the number one circulated newspaper in the country (the New York Times I beleive is number two, please correct me if I am wrong). This is due largely in part to the number of "complimentary copies" nearly every hotel in the country distributes on the doorsteps of their patrons. When I stayed in a hotel in Vancouver a few months ago, I received a copy of USA Today, which i thought was rather ironic.

If you've ever seen a USA Today vending machine, it's different from your average newspaper box. The reason? When USA Today was founded, the marketing folks wanted some way to make it visually stand out from just another newspaper on the streets (this was at a time when most American cities had at least two competing dailies). So they redesigned the vending machine to look like...

...a television.

It's quite fitting for the depth (or lack thereof) of their coverage. If I wind up with this paper (usually through no fault of my own -- my campus minister likes it, so on Wesley trips, I wind up with his secondhand copy), it might take me 15 minutes to read cover-to-cover... or it might not. I'd rather have the local paper of just about any city with a 100,000 or greater population -- at least I'll get the Associated Press Wire lead stories.