USA Today Press Release: How to Get Your News on USA Today (Cost + Requirements)

"Can I get a press release on USA Today?" is one of the most common questions we get. The answer is yes, but what you are buying is often misunderstood, by buyers and by some sellers. So we checked the actual pages on September 14, 2026, and wrote down what is there.

Disclosure: I work on RedPress. We sell USA Today press release placements, so read this with that in mind. Everything below can be checked on the live pages.

TL;DR

usatoday.com has a dedicated press release section at /press-release/. It is paid partner content, not USA Today journalism.
Every release carries a label saying the USA TODAY Network news staff was not involved.
Release pages are indexable, but links inside the release body are nofollow.
The format rules are strict: for example, no city or state name in the headline. Several topics are refused outright.

What the page actually says

In June 2025, Gannett (now called USA TODAY Co.) and XPR Media announced an agreement that put press releases distributed by XPR Media into a dedicated section on usatoday.com. Each release lives at a URL like usatoday.com/press-release/story/<id>/<slug>/, and the top of the page says:

"This page contains press release content distributed by XPR Media. Members of the editorial and news staff of the USA TODAY Network were not involved in the creation of this content. The placement of this content is part of a paid service."

That label is the whole story. It is a legitimate, clearly disclosed way to publish your announcement on a national news domain. It is not a USA Today article, and it shouldn't be marketed as "featured by USA Today".

XPR Media works with agencies, so businesses buy these placements through distribution services. Services that sell placements in this section include distributors like PressAdvantage, Pinion Newswire and EdgeNewswire, and RedPress.

The technical facts (checked, not assumed)

Release pages carry an index, follow robots directive, so they can show up in search.
Outbound links inside the release body are marked nofollow.
The server also sends noarchive,nocache.
How long a page stays up is the publisher's call. We have seen an older release URL go 404. Save a PDF and a screenshot on the day it goes live.

So the value here is credibility and a citable national-news URL. It is not link equity, and it is not guaranteed traffic.

Requirements that trip people up

These are the guidelines applied to USA Today placements as of September 2026:

Headline: 70 characters max, Title Case, and no city or state name. This is the most common rejection.
Sub-headline: 120 characters max, sentence case, no closing period.
Dateline: it opens the lead, in the form CITY, State - Month Day, Year -.
Body: AP style, inverted pyramid, 2–4 sentences per paragraph, every claim attributed, ending with ###.
Announcement: it has to be real news, stated in both the headline and the body. Advertorials are refused.
Links: 3–5 embedded links on descriptive anchor text, no bare URLs, 1–3 images with alt text.

Refused topics include medical cure claims (supplements too), gambling of any kind, cannabis and psychedelics, weapons, adult content, politics, religion, and coin or NFT promotion. Blockchain news can pass when it is about the technology or a partnership rather than a token.

Cost and timing

Distributors list USA Today placements in roughly the $175–$250 range. We list ours at $175 (as of September 2026) with a 5-day delivery window, and another distributor publicly reports $250. Editorial review happens before anything goes out, so a release that breaks the rules gets fixed or refused rather than published.

The free route still exists

For actual USA Today coverage, the news tips link now leads to the staff directory. Find the reporter who covers your beat and pitch them a story, not a release. The local USA TODAY Network papers are often the more realistic target for local news.

How to describe it honestly

Good: "Our announcement was published in USA Today's press release section."
Not good: "As featured in USA Today" or "USA Today reports".

Customers and investors can click the link and read the label, so the honest version is also the safer one.

The full guide, with a USA Today–ready release skeleton and a checklist table, is here: USA Today press release: cost and requirements. If you want to publish one, our USA Today placement page lists what is included.

Question for the group: have you used a USA Today press release placement for credibility, on a landing page or in an investor deck? Did anyone actually click through?