More USA Today McNuggets

Two points about Tim Rutten’s story (“McPaper at 20: A Brief List of Successes,” Sept. 6) on USA Today’s 20th anniversary:

In identifying the paper’s audience as “laptop-toting business travelers,” Rutten has failed to check the coffee shops and convenience stores in his own neighborhood. Smart circulation directors know--and should worry-- that a great unrecognized story of USA Today’s success is in the ordinary, nontraveling folks--especially young people, women of all ages, and just-moved families--who prefer it to the local daily.

UC Berkeley Dean Orville Schell, whom Rutten quotes, doesn’t get it, either. “With USA Today, it’s all something you can get somewhere else,” he complains.

Maybe, but the sweet spot is hidden in that very sentence. Most citizens don’t have time to scout dozens of papers and magazines, watch endless cable TV and comb the Web to become informed. But if anybody makes news in any forum (and across a wide range of topics), USA Today will have at least a note on it.

At 20, USA Today is still evolving, and that’s a good thing. It’s interesting that some journalists still don’t see the way it works.

JOHN WALTER

Atlanta, Ga.

John Walter was a founding editor of USA Today and worked there from 1982 to 1989.

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As a working journalist who, among other things, has been held at gunpoint by the IRA, picked my way through the rubble and carnage of devastating earthquakes and witnessed the horrific aftermath of some of the world’s worst air crashes, I can assure Rutten there are many things a lot more depressing than finding USA Today on your door handle.

There have been times when I and many other working journalists would have been overjoyed to have a hotel room, let alone one with that day’s newspaper delivered to you while you slept.

JOHN HISCOCK

Santa Monica