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Unpaid furloughs at Gannett Co. Inc. in McLean will now include nearly 1,500 employees at its flagship USA Today. USA Today employees will be required to take one week of unpaid leave between now and July. In a memo to employees Thursday, USA Today publisher David Hunke also said an existing pay freeze, first implemented in February 2009, will be extended by at least 90 days. A USA Today spokesperson confirms the furloughs and pay freeze extension affect all 1,495 of USA Today’s employees. "National advertising revenues in general were still down from the previous year as were paid advertising...

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan -- Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism -- responds to critics of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies by saying "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda." Brennan writes that, "Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill." In the oped, titled "'We need no lectures': Administration disrupts terrorists’ plots, takes fight to them abroad," Brennan writes that politics "should never get in the way of national security. But too many in...

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 For Government, Let the Good Times Roll The Great Recession has practically been a boom, if you have a government job. For most Americans, the Great Recession has been an occasion to hold on for dear life. For public employees, it’s been an occasion to let the good times roll. The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. At the beginning of the downturn, the Transportation Department had one person making $170,000...

Barack Obama has suffered a 36-point drop in the gap between approval and disapproval since Inauguration Day in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll of adults. He started at 64/25, but limps into Christmas with 49/46, within the margin of error. In fact, Obama fared worse than any other President in the history of the survey. What makes this remarkable is the amount of goodwill Obama had available at the beginning of his presidency. The only President to suffer this kind of beating in the USAT/Gallup polling was Ronald Reagan, who had to contend with a fairly unfriendly media as well...

USAToday won't allow excerpts, therefore nobody reads their rag online anymore. However, this article was too good not to call to Freeper attention. The bottom line: even with the USAToday's push poll questions and oversampling of Rats, Barry Boy has dropped from 39 points positive, to 3 points positive (i.e. a statistical dead heat) in only 10 months. You can read the article HERE, if so inclined. USAToday intends to publish the interals tomorrow. Enjoy ...

* In a feature article based on an interview with Sarah Palin, USA's Kathy Kiely cherry picked some old poll data to make the former governor appear to be less popular with the American public than she actually is: "But even as her book sales soar, Palin remains a divisive figure in American politics. In an October Gallup Poll, 50% of those surveyed viewed the conservative Republican unfavorably, compared to 40% who had a favorable view."That Gallup poll was conducted October 1-4, more than three two months ago. Since then, an Opinion Research poll conducted November 17-18 for FOX News...

No Recession for Tedford Bethany Stotts, November 10, 2009 California students and furloughed faculty will be feeling the pinch this academic year. Not so for University of California head coach, Jeff Tedford. He’s going to get $2.8 million for the upcoming football season. Yes, the University of California system, despite its budget crises, will give Jeff Tedford $2.8 million this year. The California Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley also has a planned $430 million makeover. How high has Tedford’s salary climbed as of late? A 2004 press release from UC Berkeley regarding his 5-year contract states that “Coach Jeff Tedford,...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) - The Wall Street Journal has surpassed USA Today as the top-selling daily newspaper in the United States.</p> <p>The Audit Bureau of Circulations won't be releasing its latest figures until Oct. 26, but the Journal said Wednesday that it gained about 12,000 subscribers in the April-September period, compared with a year earlier. That puts its average Monday-Friday circulation at 2.02 million.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) - USA Today is expecting to report a 17 percent decline in circulation. That would be its largest drop ever. While most large newspapers are struggling to keep print subscribers and newsstand sales, USA Today is also being slammed by the slump in travel. Many of the newspaper's sales come in hotels and airports. USA Today's publisher, David Hunke (pronounced HUNK'-ee), told staff about the circulation plunge in a memo Friday. From April through September, the average daily circulation at the Gannett Co.-owned newspaper was 1.88 million. That amounted to 398,000 fewer copies than in the same...

When the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases the latest numbers on Oct. 26, it will show that USA Today's circulation fell 17% to 1.88 million for the six months ending September 2009, a drop of about 390,000 copies. The decline could also threaten USA Today’s position as the No. 1 newspaper in the country by circulation. To put that in perspective, the reduction of copies represents roughly the entire daily circulation of The Arizona Republic the 10th largest paper in the U.S. as of spring. The loss was an expected one at the Nation's Newspaper, which implemented a price increase...

Obviously, the "main stream" media are hard of hearing and seeing. About 2 million mad-as-hell taxpayers assembling in Washington, D.C. for the largest-ever (most well-behaved ever, most respectful ever) protest did not make it onto their radar screens (or our TV screens). They need our help. Maybe we cannot repeat an assembly of 2 million mad-as-hell taxpaying patriots in one place, but surely those who longed to go and couldn't would love to be a part of Operation "Can You Hear Us Now?" I'll bet for every one patriot who went to D.C. there are 10-20 more who wished they...

Sitting here in my DC hotel room this morning and received the Hotel's USA Today newspaper and took a look through the front page section. Guess What! The USA Today didn't even have any story on the Washington Tea Party. Can you imagine that! No story. The Newspaper media is wondering why their readership is declining its obivious that they are the Obama Media department and they work for the Democratic party. Can you imagine that 1,500,000 people attended a rally in DC to wake up the politicians and they USA Today doesn't cover it. I guess we have the...

They’re not terribly enthusiastic about it, but USA Today corrects the record — in a sidebar — on a number of assertions made by Barack Obama yesterday at his Portsmouth, NH forum. They leave out the biggest whopper, which is Obama’s claim that he has never favored single-payer health-care systems, but they do catch a couple of other big fibs, including Obama’s snow job on AARP endorsement. One of the best catches from USA Today concerns Medicare Advantage, about which Obama has lied for over two years: “Insurance companies basically get $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that...

Unable to post thread due to copyright go to link http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/unamerican-attacks-cant-derail-health-care-debate-.html#more

<p>USA Today takes the cake for allowing the publication of the following editorial in its pages this morning by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. Comments after.</p>

McLean-based Gannett -- the nation's largest publisher of newspapers, including USA Today -- today said it posted a $70.5 million profit in the second quarter, compared to a loss last year, despite a continue slide in advertising revenue. The results were better than analysts had expected and sent Gannett stock soaring; it closed up 29 percent to $4.50 per share today. The profit came from cost-cutting, not growth. And the company predicted that revenues would continue to dip in its broadcast unit next quarter.

Gannett to cut 1,400 jobs in new round of cuts NEW YORK – Newspaper publisher Gannett Co. plans to cut 1,400 jobs in the next few weeks, about 3 percent of the work force, as it faces a prolonged slump in advertising revenue. The majority of layoffs will come by July 9, he said. The move follows a 10 percent cut at Gannett last year, which left the company with about 41,500 employees. Gannett publishes USA Today, the largest newspaper by circulation in the U.S., along with dozens of other newspapers

On May 28, 2009 USA Today published a story based on a report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the Federal Department of Education, titled “The Condition of Education 2009.” The headline of the USA Today story was “Profound shift in kind of families who are homeschooling their children.” A few days later the title was changed to “More higher-income families are homeschooling their children.” Regrettably, among other problems with the article, USA Today made one blatant error and one very misleading claim. The blatant error is USA Today’s statement that homeschoolers are increasingly...

Gannett Co., the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., reported a 60 percent decline in first-quarter profit Thursday and said the decline in its advertising revenue is accelerating. Gannett, which publishes USA Today ... ad revenue shrunk by 33.5 percent. USA Today's total number of paid ad pages in the quarter fell to 527, from 826 a year ago.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Many U.S. hotel chains like to offer USA Today, The Wall Street Journal or their local newspaper as a courtesy to guests. Marriott International Inc will offer a different courtesy: no paper at all. Marriott said on Monday that it will stop dropping daily papers automatically at its guests' doors. Now, it will offer them a choice of papers or, if they want, no paper at all. Based on preliminary data, Marriott projects that this will reduce newspaper distribution by about 50,000 copies daily, or 18 million annually. Beginning June 1, guests at the company's full-service...