US News & World Report in particular was embarrassingly bad, but I felt the worst when traveling abroad and the only US newspaper I saw in some locations was USA Today. What they must think of us.
USA Today was deliberately created as a colorful low-brow but not really tabloid-y paper that, among other places, tended to be the paper of choice to leave outside your hotel room in the morning. My favorite quote about it was something to the effect of: "It's the newspaper for people who find the nightly news too challenging to understand."
I remember USA Today being controversial when it was introduced. Its stories were so short that they often weren't generally continued past the front page, which seemed absurd at the time.
Today many people don't read past the headlines, and the pacing of USA Today seems positively languid and scholarly.
Back in the day when the International Herald Tribune was publishing, I'd read it. It was 8 pages and available at most train stations. It was bits of the NY Times and Washington Post. I don't think it had any original content but the ads were interesting. The USA Today was available but it really wasn't any good.
