- Gannett Company
Allen H. Neuharth was born in 1924 in South Dakota and grew up there in Eureka. His first job was as a newsboy, at age 11, rising to the composing room of the Alpena Journal. Neuharth was the editor of his high school newspaper and at the University of South Dakota. After college Neuharth went to work for the Associated Press for two years. In 1952 he went out on his own and published with a friend a weekly tabloid called SoDak Sports. Despite being well-written, informative, filled with statistics, innovative, and designed to grab readers’ attention with pictures of cheerleaders and beauty queens, the paper closed down after only two years. Neuharth lost his $50,000 investment as a result of that failure.
Neuharth worked for the Knight newspaper chain at the Miami Herald from 1954 until 1963, when he moved over to Gannett publishers. Having a reputation as a publisher of bland, small-town papers, Neuharth saw his chance to change things in 1982. That year he decided America needed a small-town paper on a national level, and USA Today was born. Neuharth took USA to a profitable paper in just five years, a feat only outperformed by People Magazine.
As the chairman of the Gannett Company Neuharth led a conglomerate of 90 daily papers, 16 radio station and 8 TV stations to great success.
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