I have noticed lately that quite a few of the Gannett papers have changed their pagination styles to match with the USA Today inserts within that are paginated as number-letter (by which I mean that those that numbered as letter-number [A1, A2 and A3] instead of number-letter [1A, 2A and 3A] have changed to the latter to become uniform in pagination throughout the paper). Have you noticed that, and if so, why is that?

I should add, of course, that this only applies to the Gannett papers that paginated as letter-number, because not all did.

This probably wont answer your question at all but the quality of the USA Today has gone down a ton. I mean the articles are shorter, the paper along is flimsy as its not quite as large as it once was. I mean the Life section is what, 2 pages? Not even close to what it was years ago.

In fact, I blogged about it here:


http://www.superbowlgreatness.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-new-usa-today.html

This probably wont answer your question at all but the quality of the USA Today has gone down a ton. I mean the articles are shorter, the paper along is flimsy as its not quite as large as it once was. I mean the Life section is what, 2 pages? Not even close to what it was years ago.

In fact, I blogged about it here:


http://www.superbowlgreatness.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-new-usa-today.html

It doesn't, you're right. That is a great observation, however, and is why I have not enjoyed reading the USA Today lately. There's not much of interest in it now. Back when I saw my first one, there was a lot to like-- notably, of course, that each section had the "_____line" columns on the sides, and under that for the Money and Sports sections, "A quick read on the top _____ stories of the day" (the Life section, however, had it as "on what people are talking about," and the front section had it as "on the news of the day"). The Money, Sports and Life sections also had something at the top middle called "Today's Tip-Off," which, IIRC, seemed to be some sort of factoids on the subject of that section.

I don't know why it is, but as I said, USA Today is not the paper it once was, and as such, IMO, suffers for it.