Circulation Steroids?

McWow -- has it been 25 years already?

USA Today hits its silver anniversary tomorrow and the toasts are pouring in. What was mocked as "McPaper" back in the day is now basking in a flood of "ahead of its time" compliments and "they're number one"s.

Marketwatch's Jon Friedman offered up this view:

It was the summer of 1983. I had just landed my first newspaper job, at a daily with the unlikely name of USA Today. While the publication was not yet a year old, it had already achieved notoriety -- as a journalistic joke.

You see, I lived in Manhattan, where the New York Times is the dominant voice. Times loyalists, as well as newspaper purists and big-city pundits, got a kick out of ridiculing my new employer…

Figured. The city slickers didn't understand the strategy -- or the appeal -- of USA Today. Well, they get it now. USA Today now has an average daily circulation of 2.3 million.

And Editor and Publisher chimed in as well:

Since it launched on Sept. 15, 1982, amid complaints that it lacked in-depth reporting and used too many snappy graphics and color photos in place of hard-hitting news, the national daily has taken position as a circulation leader, ranking at or near the top consistently.

In addition, the paper has transformed the way many dailies operate, from pushing shorter, quicker brief-style stories to leading the way in color photography long before others saw the need.

But one sorta squishy fact pops up in all the reporting surrounding the so-called "Nation's Newspaper": That it's on top of the heap in terms of circulation – soundly beating the Wall Street Journal by 200,000 readers and doubling the circulation of the New York Times.

To wit, here are the top five papers in America by circulation, according the newspaper industry's Audit Bureau of Circulation(ABC):

USA Today -- 2,278,022

Wall Street Journal – 2,062,312

New York Times -- 1,120,420

Los Angeles Times – 815,723

New York Post – 724,748

I hate to be a downer here at the birthday bash, but ...

While the USA Today story is overwhelmingly positive, it's also a case study in fuzzy math and the newspaper industry's measurement system. You see, USA Today doesn't get bought by 2.3 million people -- at least not in the traditional sense of the word "bought." Instead, they carpet the hallways of America's hotels, making "The Nation's Newspaper" more like The Nation's Doormat.

According to data acquired by this writer from the ABC, 1,174,632 USA Todays are provided to the lodgers of America during the week, compared to 84,918 Wall Street Journals and a relatively modest 43, 209 New York Times. Yes, USA Today works out financial agreements with the hotels and are entirely upfront with advertisers … but it still casts the numbers in a different light. (And yes, observant readers, that also means that USA Today has a higher hotel circulation than the overall number for the New York Times. There's your "win a bar bet" fact for the weekend.)

There's nothing against the rules about what the paper is doing -- the hotels and inns of America aren't quite Barry Bonds' "cream" and "clear" here -- but there is a bit more to the USA Today success story than at first glance.