[originaltext]W: They meant that McPaper looked good, but the news and articles

W: They meant that McPaper looked good, but the news and articles in it were not so important, is that correct?
M: Yes. (6-1) People said USA Today "dumbed down" the news. Do you know what "dumb down" means?
W: Yeah, (6-2) I think it means to make things too simple. Like, you want to make it easy to understand, but you make it too easy. So it’s like writing for a little child.
M: (6-3) That’s exactly right. If you make something too simple, people get mad. They think that the writer thinks they’re stupid. But a funny thing happened then. More and more people started reading USA Today. About a year after it started, it had a circulation of more than one million. (7) Today, its circulation is past two million.
W: Wow. That is really dramatic, considering the mockery they got at the very start. Since circulation is the number of papers that are read each day, it means that now USA Today distributes more than two million copies of each issue.
M: Yes. When other papers saw the circulation of USA Today grew, they could not stay calm any more. (8) So, they started to copy USA Today’s style. Their stories got shorter, and they started using lots of color photos and charts. They replaced serious news with feature stories. Soon, it became normal for newspapers to look like USA Today.
W: But I guess the change of style isn’t the only factor that makes USA Today so popular.
M: Of course. (9) Another significant factor in its success is timeliness.
W: Timeliness? Doesn’t it mean that newspapers arrive at readers’ doors on time each day? How can it be a significant factor as other papers can be punctual as well?
M: Nope! Timeliness here means newspapers’ ability to report the latest news. Daily newspapers have a deadline, which is the time they have to stop writing and start printing the paper. The deadline used to cause papers to leave out news. This was especially true between East Coast papers and West Coast sports scores. Basketball, football and baseball games would end on the West Coast at 11 p. m. But that’s 2 a. m. Eastern time. It was too late to put the score of the game in the next day’s paper. USA Today, however, used satellites to transmit news. It set later deadlines, so that it could include the West Coast scores. This, alone, caused many people to buy the paper.
W: But today most papers use satellites. (10-1) So why has USA Today’s circulation kept growing?
M: Excellent question. (10-2) Uh, actually, USA Today has changed nowadays. Though it still looks colorful, it has started to become more like traditional papers. Its stories are getting longer, and it has more international news. It has changed because people are changing. The paper needs to appeal to more educated readers, because they’re the ones with money and the ones who read papers at all. Also, it needs to sell more papers overseas. International and literate readers don’t want "dumbed down" news.
W: I get it. (10-3) The key is "keeping up with the time."
M: Exactly.
W: Thank you for sharing your information about USA Today.
M: You are welcome.
This is the end of Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on what you have just heard.
6. Why did people say USA Today "dumbed down" the news?
7. What is the circulation of USA Today now?
8. What did other newspapers do when they saw the success of USA Today"!
9. What is the other factor in the success of USA Today besides its changing of style?
10. Why can USA Today’s circulation keep growing?