Al Neuharth, Executive Who Built Gannett and USA Today, Is Dead at 89

USA Today announced his death. Family members said the cause was complications of a recent fall.

Mr. Neuharth’s influence on American journalism extended well beyond the 93 daily newspapers he amassed for Gannett. USA Today’s pioneering use of bright colors and bite-size articles in the early 1980s was mimicked by newspapers across the country seeking to compete with television. His business model, characterized by stripped-down costs and generous margins, reshaped the industry, tilting the balance between profits and public service and turning Gannett into a darling of Wall Street.

Mr. Neuharth’s admirers applauded him for rethinking the American newspaper and streamlining the business in a way that would make print media more nimble and competitive in the Internet age.

“Neuharth’s innovations had a revolutionary impact,” said Bill Kovach, former editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. “Virtually no newspaper in the country, nor many around the world, have not been deeply affected by USA Today in terms of look, color, graphics and brevity.”

But his critics said the cost-cutting he championed was draconian and would only dumb down journalism and hasten the industry’s decline. They mocked USA Today as “McPaper” and said Mr. Neuharth’s editorial approach — emphasizing what readers wanted over what editors thought was important — resulted in a profusion of fluff.

Yet Mr. Neuharth’s emphasis on lifestyle coverage was also credited with helping to broaden the definition of news, to include cultural trends and health and consumer issues. “We give the readers what they want because we are in the business of selling news,” he told The New York Times in 1979. “If we meet the wants of an audience in a community, as we try to, successfully, then we can also give readers a percentage of what they need. But that isn’t what sells.”

In an industry long dominated by white men, Mr. Neuharth led the way in the hiring and promotion of women and minorities, tying compensation to hiring goals. By 1988 the proportion of minorities in Gannett newsrooms was 47 percent higher than the national average. Women accounted for nearly 40 percent of the company’s managers, professionals, technicians and sales agents and an unheard-of quarter of its newspaper publishers.

As Gannett’s chairman from 1973 to 1989, Mr. Neuharth transformed a regional group of mostly small, northeastern newspapers based in Rochester into a multimedia empire comprising the nation’s largest newspaper chain, 10 television and 16 radio stations and the nation’s largest outdoor advertising company, now based in McLean, Va.

Flamboyant, egotistic and proudly Machiavellian, Mr. Neuharth relished the role of larger-than-life tycoon. Even as he squeezed newspapers to plump share prices, he lived royally, maintaining luxurious executive suites in New York and Washington and five homes around the country. He crisscrossed the world in his corporate jet and was known to ride by limousine even for just a few blocks.

With a personal style that was more Rat Pack than rumpled newspaperman, he wore designer finery only in shades of black and white; was frequently seen with a woman on his arm, three of whom he married; and favored martinis. He installed bronze busts of himself in the lobbies of the two newspapers he founded, USA Today in McLean and Florida Today in Melbourne, Fla.

He was openly contemptuous of the journalistic establishment, reserving particular scorn for Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post, a rival across the Potomac with whom he feuded publicly.

“If USA Today is a good newspaper, then I’m in the wrong business,” Mr. Bradlee once said.

Mr. Neuharth shot back: “Bradlee and I finally agree on something. He is in the wrong business.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/business/media/al-neuharth-executive-who-built-gannett-and-usa-today-is-dead-at-89.html?partner=rss&emc=rss