Program to offer USA Today


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The Undergraduate Student Government and USA Today  will offer free newspapers for eight weeks to students on campus beginning Monday. This partnership continues USG’s goal to increase readership of national newspapers among the student body.

Driven by the success of USG’s partnership with The New York Times, student government leaders reached out to other daily publications in order to offer students a variety of news sources.

Newsstands will be located at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and Trojan Grounds. The delivery of The New York Times and USA Today will occur only Monday – Friday.

Compared to the semester-long New York Times program, the trial period for USA Today will last eight weeks. The trial period will be used to gauge students’ interests in the additional publication, according to Andres Guarnizo, USG’s academic director and a senior majoring in communication.

Guarnizo views this new deal as an avenue for students to become more informed from a variety of perspectives.

“We want to give them a variety of mediums to access news,” Guarnizo said. “Having a choice is the best thing possible. … It makes a well-rounded individual to be informed of the news.”

USA Today approached USG with its collegiate readership program. The goal of the program is to promote civic literacy and global awareness on campus through daily exposure to the news, according to the USA Today website. Each day the publication will give USG 300 newspapers to put on newsstands.

Guarnizo believes having print newspapers on campus will make students more inclined to stay informed with local and world events.

“Not everyone is willing to seek out news, so when the hard copy is there people will pick it up and maybe read it when eating lunch and then keep it with them throughout the day,” Guarnizo said.

USG President Mikey Geragos, a senior majoring in public policy, management and planning, views the program as an example of USG’s commitment to students’ needs.

“It’s a program that a lot of other schools did that we were really behind in,” Geragos said.

USG is looking into forming connections with The Wall Street Journal and other publications that approach them with a readership program.