USA Today at 20: the inside story; two tumultuous decades have passed since the magazine was launched, providing an open forum for the viewpoints of the nation's leaders and other experts

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1998

Luring the leaders

The magazine's format has drawn America's leaders like bees to honey. When the President of the United States, Cabinet members, senators and Congressmen (Republicans and Democrats alike), and the heads of the FBI and CIA decide to communicate directly with our readers in our National Affairs section--their names bylined for all to see--we must be doing something right. But politics has not been the only string in our bow.

We turned to the policy- and decisionmakers to help our readers "follow the money," as Watergate informant "Deep Throat" told Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Key executives from virtually every major corporation were quick to present business' side of the story in our Economics and Business & Finance departments, while members of the Federal Reserve System, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Departments of Commerce and Labor countered with the government's side. For balance--and to explain how both sides were right or wrong--Nobel Prize-winning economists were there as well. It's your money, we told our readers; here's how to invest it, spend it, and, most important, keep it!

As for the "people issues" that bring together--and, sadly, often divide----our nation, we opened our pages to spokespersons from all sides of the spectrum to get a balanced perspective of what makes America tick. Advocates for children, the elderly, and the disadvantaged; impassioned voices from the prolife and pro-choice camps; defenders of the country's farms and cities; supporters of open borders and isolationists seeking to close them--all came forward to plead their cases in USA Today's Life in America section.

Yet, we realized, Fortress America can not stand alone on a turbulent planet. In a century tom by two world wars and countless outbursts of regional violence and shocking incidents of genocide, readers had better know what is going on in far-reaching parts of the globe that ultimately will impact on the U.S. So, we took a two-pronged approach, calling upon international experts as well as our ambassadors to the United Nations and heads of the World Bank and Agency for International Development in our USA Looks at the World department, then turning the mirror around with The World Looks at USA. This gave world leaders such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and ambassadors to the U.S. from foreign countries an opportunity to give their nations' views--sometimes lovingly, other times harshly critical--of the American colossus.

And so it went through the rest of our departments. In Medicine & Health and Psychology, physicians and researchers put lifesaving medical developments and life-threatening diseases under a microscope, helping our readers in their pursuit of healthy bodies and minds. Science & Technology and Ecology explored the dazzlingly rapid evolution of scientific discoveries that have revolutionized the world as we hurtle toward the millennium, as well as their impact on our resilient, yet fragile, planet. Supreme Court justices and attorneys peeled back the curtains to reveal what goes on in courtrooms and jury boxes and what all too frequently causes travesties of justice and corruption of the legal system via our Law & Justice department.