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Joel Sucherman, Director of Product Innovation at USA Today, spoke to George Mason University students Tuesday about how USA Today is responding to the paradigm shift in journalism, and described his vision of the future of both print and multimedia news content.

The Model Breaks Down

Sucherman said USA Today has had to respond to two major shifts in the way people digest information.

1. Publishing is no longer requires a huge investment, and consumers are gravitating toward informal sources of information on the web.
2. Fewer people are reading print, resulting in reduced circulation and decreased financial resources.

Both of these shifts pointed towards a future that emphasized the web, but at the start, USA Today was apprehensive about a "web first" approach to news writing. Reporters worried the paper would "scoop itself" by publishing timely web articles that tipped off competitors before they went to print.

Sucherman said an important lesson the newspaper had to learn was that information sources on the web have to cooperate. They came to believe that the best way to keep readers coming back was to give them what they wanted. In that spirit, he said, the USA Today website guides readers to whoever has a specific story rather than staying silent to keep them on the site.

"Sending people away from USA Today didn't mean sending them away forever," Sucherman said.

He described some of the ways that USA Today has gone on to embrace the online format.

Pop Candy

Pop Candy, a pop culture blog by Whitney Matheson, has such a lively community that the blog can carry on without Matheson when she is on assignment. She simply posts a brief profile of a "reader of the day" and asks readers to talk amongst themselves for a while. Most entries of this kind boast nearly 2,000 comments.

Matheson started the blog as an entry-level employee in the Life section.

"She found a niche, started to explore it, and found an audience," said Sucherman.

Hotel Media Wall

A cornerstone of USA Today's existence is its special relationship with hotels, which provide copies of the print edition to overnight guests. In fact, along with its presence in newsstands, this relationship has buffered the newspaper from some of the losses other papers have suffered from decresed circulation.

As USA Today contemplates a future where hotel guests may lose interest in reading the print edition of the paper in the morning, it has experimented with ideas such as the "media wall," a 52 inch touch screen providing information on local weather, events, and areas of interest.

Sucherman said such a resource was likely to appeal to savvy business travelers more comfortable with self-service than with waiting to speak to a receptionist.

Candidate Match Game

Sucherman described a unique application of database journalism to the USA Today site, where readers take a quiz on their opinions on various matters of national policy, and watch as each answer advances a particular presidential candidate in a "horse race" until one comes out as the best match for their opinions.

"This is serious journalism couched in a fun and interesting way," said Sucherman.

The application not only provides readers with an entertaining way to learn more about the candidates, but it can also be adjusted in sophisticated ways, such as adjusting the weight they would like to give to each issue.

Info-tainment... Is it Journalism?

Sucherman said that the effort to make serious, "dry" reporting fun and relevent for readers is part of an effort to pursue the founder's goal of a "community of USA" that connects people and affirms their importance.

Because of this approach, the paper has been accused of being a sort of fast-food version of the news, but Sucherman said that they now embrace the term "McPaper." If the paper can be engaging without being dumbed down, Sucherman said, "That's something great."

The End of Print

Sucherman said he does not believe print newspapers will die out immediately, but will start to look more like magazines, providing analysis rather than breaking the stories. However, he also said that the stories in print were likely to become secondary to the stories online, and could just as easily become a kind of preview material for the online edition.

Though we could be headed for a paperless world, Sucherman dismissed the idea of traditional newspapers being transferred onto inkless tablets. If paper dissappears, he said, the information that used to be in print is likely to move to iPods and cell phones -- "Things we already carry around."

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