Charles Apple

In sad New Year’s Eve news, USA Today laid off the U in its name Wednesday. The paper will now be known as SA Today.

U has been with SA Today since the paper’s launch in 1982. No reason was given for the layoff, other than the fact that U had fallen and couldn’t get up:

Actually, it was high winds that blew the U off the side
of USA Today’s headquarters building in McLean, Va.,
Wednesday. But just think of the fun we’d miss if we
reported only that. Photo by William Couch.
—

None of SA Today’s other vowels could be reached for comment on Thursday: We went around and around with O and the twins, A and A, were reportedly attending a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Y, too, occasionally fills in as a vowel, sources say.

U is just the latest typographical character to find itself on the unemployment line. The Sun-Sentinel of Ft. Lauderdale laid off its hyphen in August:

You know what they say: Que serif, serif.

Our best wishes to U for good luck in 2009.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Industry woes, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.