• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

USA Today Co., formerly known as Gannett, has had its new name for less than a year. How is it doing?

Not bad, especially on the digital front.

"Digital-only subscription and Digital Other revenues were the primary drivers of both improved digital revenue growth and the improved overall same store revenue trends,” says Mike Reed, chairman and CEO, in a statement. “We continue to position our company for AI content licensing growth through valued and unique content creation on a daily basis at scale, digitizing more of our very large, archived content base, and deploying blocking technology on our platform to prevent the unauthorized use of our valuable content."

That deployment of blocking technology is a practice other publishers might emulate.

As for the numbers, USA Today Co. realized total revenue of $548.5 million during the quarter, a 4% decrease YoY. And same-store revenue fell by 1.8%, which the company says is a 590 basis point improvement compared to the same period in the prior year.

Total digital revenues hit $261.9 million, 47.8% of the company’s overall revenue, versus $250 million in the same quarter of 2025, a 5.2% boost on a same-store basis.

Digital ad revenue totaled $80.9 million and digital-only subscriptions drew $45.9 million, a return to YoY growth.

And online traffic has been growing. The firm drew 180 million average monthly unique visitors in Q1. 

In contrast with digital, print and commercial fell to $286 million from $321 million in the same period last year.

Net income reached almost $20 million, up from a $7 million loss last year. 

Reed concluded, "We are pleased to report strong and improving first quarter performance against important financial and metric measurements, building on a strong fourth quarter from last year.”