USA Today

Published by the 90-newspaper group Gannet Company, USA Today was the creation of Allen H. Neuharth who saw it as a national publication that could halt the decline of newspaper readership through innovation in writing, typography and the use of extensive.

In February 1980 Neuharth met with members of a task force to discuss his vision for unique nationally distributed daily newspaper.

By early 1982, a team of news, advertising and production personnel from Gannet’s daily newspaper had developed and printed three different prototypes, which were sent to nearly 5,000 professional people.

After receiving a positive response, Gannet’s board of directors unanimously approved the paper’s launch. The newspaper was launched on September 15, 1982; with 155,000 copies of the first edition of USA Today hit the newsstands. It was revealing a new and noticeable design deviation.

Along with the compacting of stories by using a tight writing style, USA Today included a bright and colourful display filled with photograph, maps, charts, graphs and other such informational graphics. Barely a month after its debut, USA Today’s circulation hit 363,879 double the original year-end projection, and topped the 1 million mark just seven months after its introduction.

By the end of its third year, USA Today had become the second largest paper in the country, with a circulation topped only by The Wall Street Journal.

To stay ahead of the imitative competition, USA Today decided t become a more serious newspaper with improved journalism. The shift from primarily soft news to hard news began with the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. By 1991, editors begin focus much more sharply on hard news rather than soft news.

The first major redesign in USA Today’s history occurred in 2000 as the paper move from a 54 inch to a 50 inch width. The goal of the redesign was to make the paper easier to read and cleaner in design.
USA Today

Flavor industry in United States

The human craving for flavor has been largely unacknowledged and unexamined force in history.

Royal empires have been built, unexplored lands have been traversed great religious and philosophies have been forever changed by the spice trade. In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail to find seasoning.

The United States flavor industry has its roots in the United Kingdom and Europe. It was common to ship European flavors to New York City as early as 1797.

The flavor industry came together with perfume industry, subsequently moving from New York to New Jersey to gain more plant capacity.

Prior to 1850s Americans flavored their own foods and beverages using local and foreign sources of flavoring such as rum, fruit juice and spices.

By the mid-nineteenth century food and beverage products containing commercial flavors started to appear in the United States.

In 1860, the first book of artificial flavoring formulation was published anonymously in Philadelphia. This was followed in 1916 by manual for the essence industry by Walter, in which a large number of formulations for artificial flavorings were published.

Flavored ice cream was first produced commercially in 1841 in Baltimore. Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886. McCormick started selling flavor extracts directly to the consumer in 1900.

Food and Drug Act of 1906 introduced a regulation of materials to be used in the food and drug industries, and this law remained in force until 1938 when it was superseded by the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

Since the end of World War II, a vast industry has risen in the United States to make processed food palatable.

Man-made flavor additives were used mainly baked goods, candies and sodas until the 1950s, when sales of processed food began to soar.

1960s and 1970s were the ‘Golden years’ of flavor research in the United States. Numerous academic and government institutions had strong flavor programs and money was readily available for flavor research.

By the mid – 1960, the American flavor industry was churning out compounds to supply the taste of Pop Tarts, Bac-Oc, Tab, Tang, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and literally thousands of other new foods.
Flavor industry in United States