Short answers, pulled from the story.
USA Today was founded by Al Neuharth and launched on the 14th of September 1982. The concept was first developed on the 29th of February 1980, when Neuharth met with a Gannett task force called "Project NN" in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Gannett's board approved the launch on the 5th of December 1981.
USA Today set its all-time single day circulation record on the 12th of September 2001, selling 3,638,600 copies for its edition covering the September 11 attacks. Earlier records included 2,257,734 copies sold on the 2nd of September 1988 for the Labor Day weekend edition.
Critics called USA Today a "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in" because it favored short, punchy news summaries and colorful graphics over the long, in-depth stories traditional newspapers published. Many in the newspaper industry considered this approach a dumbing down of journalism.
USA Today endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in 2020, backing Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The paper had maintained a non-endorsement policy beginning with the 1984 presidential election, though the editorial board broke that policy in part on the 29th of September 2016 by publishing a piece calling Donald Trump "unfit for the presidency" without endorsing his opponent.
USA Today: The Television Show premiered on the 12th of September 1988 and was cancelled in November 1989 after one and a half seasons. The final edition aired on the 7th of January 1990. The cancellation cost GTG Entertainment $13 million and was described as the costliest failure in syndication history.
On the 14th of September 2012, USA Today replaced its longtime "globe" logo with a color-coded circle that functioned as a news infographic. The redesign, developed with brand firm Wolff Olins, added a technology page, expanded travel coverage, and introduced a new website built on an in-house content management system called Presto. The Gravity advertising unit introduced in the redesign later won Digiday's Best Publishing Innovation in Advertising in 2016.