USA Today, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, says it’s joining The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times in not endorsing a presidential candidate this election.
A spokesperson for the paper told the Daily Beast on Monday that it will instead focus on providing “readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”
That’s a stark difference from four years ago when USA Today broke with decades-old tradition to endorse Joe Biden for president. That endorsement claimed Donald Trump wasn’t a capable leader and that the U.S. was “dangerously off course.”
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USA Today’s editorial board wrote that it decided to endorse back then—for the first time since 1982—because the 2020 election was was an “extraordinary moment” in history that required an “extraordinary response” from the paper.
“Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos,” the paper told its readers.
Trump, 78, is by most accounts still the same man today as he was when USA Today printed its scathing editorial about him, but the paper has apparently had a change of heart in what its readers are looking for from it.
Lark-Marie Antón, a USA Today spokesperson, explained the decision to not endorse in an email: “Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally—one race at a time. And with more than 200 publications across the nation, our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”
USA Today has a circulation of 132,640 print subscribers and has millions of more readers online. However, unlike the trio of national newspapers larger than it by print circulation—The New York Times, the Post, and The Wall Street Journal—USA Today is the flagship brand for over 200 local newspapers dotted across the country.
Unlike the billionaires overseeing of the Post and LA Times, there have been no reports that any single person in the leadership at Gannett, which is a publicly traded company, intervened to personally shut down an endorsement at USA Today.
Other Gannett newspapers are free to endorse in local elections, Antón said, but none are endorsing at the presidential level. That includes the Palm Beach Post, whose coverage area includes Mar-a-Lago, as well as large papers in three swing states—The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Poyntner Institute, a non-profit journalism research organization, reported this week that presidential endorsements are becoming less common at both regional and national newspapers. That’s partially due to shrinking staffs, it said, but also because online readers aren’t able to—or choose not to—discern the difference between a newspaper’s editorial board and its straight-news coverage. That can lead to incensed readers and less subscribers.
The Wall Street Journal, as it has since 1928, has declined to endorse a candidate this election, leaving The New York Times’ backing of Harris as the lone presidential endorsement from a national newspaper.
