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United Press International

United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th century. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982, and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its main U.S. rival, the Associated Press, UPI has concentrated on smaller information-market niches.

United Press International
IndustryJournalism
Founded1907 (as United Press Associations)
1958 (as United Press International)
Headquarters1200 N. Federal Highway, Suite 200
Boca Raton, Florida 33432[1]
ParentNews World Communications
Websiteupi.com

History

 
News room of United Press in New York, 1933

Formally named United Press Associations for incorporation and legal purposes, but publicly known and identified as United Press or UP, the news agency was created by the 1907 uniting of three smaller news syndicates by the Midwest newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps.[2][3][4] It was headed by Hugh Baillie (1890–1966) from 1935 to 1955. At the time of his retirement, UP had 2,900 clients in the United States, and 1,500 abroad.[5]

In 1958, it became United Press International after absorbing the International News Service (INS) in May.[6][7] As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing domestically for about 90 years with the Associated Press (AP) and internationally with AP, Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

At its peak, UPI had more than 2,000 full-time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries; it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. With the rising popularity of television news, the business of UPI began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company.[8]

The E.W. Scripps Company controlled United Press until its absorption of William Randolph Hearst's smaller competing agency, INS, in 1958 to form UPI. With the Hearst Corporation as a minority partner, UPI continued under Scripps management until 1982.[2][3][4]

Since its sale in 1982, UPI has changed ownership several times and was twice in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.[9] With each change in ownership came deeper service and staff cutbacks and changes of focus and a corresponding shrinkage of its traditional media customer base. Since the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its one-time major rival, the AP, UPI has concentrated on smaller information market niches. It no longer services media organizations in a major way.[10]

In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications, an international news media company founded in 1976 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon.[11][12]

It now maintains a news website and photo service and electronically publishes several information product packages. Based mostly on aggregation from other sources on the Web and gathered by a small editorial staff and stringers, UPI's daily content consists of a newsbrief summary service called "NewsTrack," which includes general, business, sports, science, health and entertainment reports, and "Quirks in the News." It also sells a premium service, which has deeper coverage and analysis of emerging threats, the security industry, and energy resources. UPI's content is presented in text, video and photo formats, in English, Spanish, and Arabic.[13]

UPI's main office is in the Miami metropolitan area and it maintains office locations in five other countries and uses freelance journalists in other major cities.

United Press Associations

 
Portrait photograph of E. W. Scripps, c. 1912

Beginning with the Cleveland Press, publisher E. W. Scripps (1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. Because the then recently reorganized Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers, most of them evening dailies in competition with existing AP franchise holders, in 1907 Scripps merged three smaller syndicates under his ownership or control, the Publishers Press Association, the Scripps-McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association, to form United Press Associations, with headquarters in New York City.[2][3][4]

Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency, also named United Press, that existed in the late 1800s, partly in cooperation with management of the original New York-based AP and partly in existential competition with two Chicago-based organizations also using the AP name (as detailed at Associated Press and in AP's 2007 history, Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else, cited in Notes).[2][3]

Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP's, Scripps required that there be no restrictions on who could buy news from his news service, and he made the new UP service available to anyone, including his competitors. Scripps also hoped to make a profit from selling that news to papers owned by others. At that time and until World War II, most newspapers relied on news agencies for stories outside their immediate geographic areas.[2][14]

Despite strong newspaper industry opposition, UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935, years before competitor AP, controlled by the newspaper industry, did likewise.

Scripps' United Press was considered "a scrappy alternative" news source to the AP. UP reporters were called "Unipressers" and were noted for their fiercely aggressive and competitive streak.[14] Another hallmark of the company's culture was little formal training of reporters; new hires were often thrust into a "sink-or-swim" situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject. They were weaned on UP's famous and well-documented (though frequently misappropriated and misquoted) slogan of "Get it first, but FIRST, get it RIGHT."[2] Despite controversy, UP (and later UPI) became a common training ground for generations of journalists.[14]

Walter Cronkite, who started with United Press in Kansas City, gained fame for his coverage of World War II in Europe and turned down Edward R. Murrow's first offer of a CBS job to stay with UP, but who later went on to anchor the CBS Evening News, once said, "I felt every Unipresser got up in the morning saying, 'This is the day I'm going to beat the hell out of AP.' That was part of the spirit. We knew we were undermanned. But we knew we could do a darn good job despite that, and so many times, we did."[14]

Despite that, like all agencies that deal with huge volumes of timely information, UP and later UPI had its share of remembered mistakes. As recounted in the various printed histories of UPI cited in Notes, the most famous one came early in its history. UP's president, Roy W. Howard, then traveling in France, telegraphed that the 1918 armistice ending World War I had been declared four days before it happened. Howard's reputation survived and he later became a Scripps partner, whose name appeared in one of the Scripps subsidiary companies, Scripps-Howard. But the mistake dogged UP/UPI for generations. Still, the agency's reporters were often able to tell stories more quickly and accurately although they were usually outnumbered by the competition. In 1950, for example, UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival, the AP. The New York Times later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it.[2]

United Press International

Frank Bartholomew, the last UP president to ascend to the agency's top job directly from its news, rather than sales ranks, took over in 1955, and according to his memoirs cited in Notes, was obsessed with merging UP with the International News Service, a news agency that had been founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1909 following Scripps' lead.

Bartholomew succeeded in putting the "I" in UPI in 1958 when UP and INS merged to become United Press International on May 24.[6][7] The new UPI now had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, about a thousand of them newspapers.[14][15]

The merger was aimed at creating a stronger competitor for the Associated Press and a stronger economic entity than either UP or INS. The newly formed United Press International (UPI) had 950 client newspapers.[15] Fearing possible antitrust issues with the Eisenhower Administration Justice Department, Scripps and Hearst rushed the merger through with unusual speed and secrecy.

Although all UP employees were retained, most INS employees lost their jobs with practically no warning. A relative few did join the new UPI and the columns of popular INS writers, such as Bob Considine, Louella Parsons and Ruth Montgomery, were carried by UPI.[15]

Rival AP was a publishers' cooperative and could assess its members to help pay the extraordinary costs of covering major news—wars, the Olympic Games, national political conventions. UPI clients, in contrast, paid a fixed annual rate; depending on individual contracts, UPI could not always ask them to help shoulder the extraordinary coverage costs. In its heyday, newspapers typically paid UPI about half what they paid AP in the same cities for the same services: At one point, for example, the Chicago Sun-Times paid AP $12,500 a week, but UPI only $5,000; the Wall Street Journal paid AP $36,000 a week, but UPI only $19,300. The AP, which serviced 1,243 newspapers at the time, remained UPI's main competitor.[14][15] In 1959, UPI had 6,208 clients in 92 countries and territories, 234 news and picture bureaus, and an annual payroll of $34,000,000, ($316,052,511 in today's dollars).[14][16]

But the UP-INS merger involved another business component that was to hurt the new UPI company badly in later years. Because INS had been a subsidiary of Hearst's King Features Syndicate and Scripps controlled several other newspaper syndicates, both companies feared possible antitrust issues. So they deliberately kept their respective syndicates out of the combined UPI company. That move cost UPI the revenues of its previous United Feature Syndicate subsidiary, which in later years made large profits on the syndication of Peanuts and other popular comic strips and columns.

UPI had an advantage of independence over the AP in reporting on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Because the AP was a cooperative essentially owned by the newspapers, those in the South influenced its coverage of the racial unrest and protests, often ignoring, minimizing, or slanting the reporting.[14] UPI did not have that sort of pressure, and management, according to UPI reporters and photographers of the day, allowed them much freedom in chronicling the events of the civil rights struggle.[14]

White House reporter Helen Thomas became the public face of UPI, as she was seen at televised press conferences beginning in the early 1960s.[14] UPI famously scooped the AP in reporting the assassination of US President John Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963.[14] UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith was an eyewitness, and he commandeered the press car's only phone to dictate the story to UPI as AP reporter Jack Bell tried—without success—to wrest the phone away so he could call his office.[8] Smith and UPI won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting.[14]

UP/UPI Newspictures, Newsfilm and Audio/Radio Network

United Press had no direct wirephoto service until 1952, when it absorbed co-owned ACME Newspictures, under pressure from parent company Scripps to better compete with AP's news and photo services.[17]

By that time, UP was also deeply involved with the newer visual medium of television. In 1948, it entered into a partnership with 20th Century Fox subsidiary Fox Movietone News to shoot newsfilm for television stations. That service, United Press Movietone, or UPMT, was a pioneer in newsfilm syndication and numbered among its clients major US and foreign networks and local stations, including for many years the early TV operation of ABC News. In subsequent decades, it underwent several changes in partnerships and names, becoming best known as United Press International Television News (UPITN). Senior UPITN executives later helped Ted Turner create CNN, with its first two presidents, Reese Schonfeld and Burt Reinhardt, coming from UPITN ranks.

The UPI Audio actuality service for radio stations, created in 1958 and later renamed the United Press International Radio Network, was a spinoff from the newsfilm service and eventually provided news material to more than a thousand radio stations and US and foreign networks, including NPR.[18]

Decline

UPI came close to the size of the AP in the early 1960s, but as publishing companies began to pare their evening newspapers, it was dropped by papers that could no longer afford to subscribe to both UPI and the AP.[14] UPI's failure to develop a television presence or subsidiary television news service has also been cited as one of the causes of its decline.[14] By the early 1980s, the number of staffers was down to 1,800 and there were just 100 news bureaus.[19]

Under pressure from some of E. W. Scripps' heirs, the Scripps company, which had been underwriting UPI's expenses at a loss for at least two decades, began trying to transfer control of UPI in the early 1980s. It tried to bring in additional newspaper industry partners and when that failed, engaged in serious negotiations with British competitor Reuters, which wanted to increase its US presence. As detailed in "Down to the Wire", by Gordon and Cohen, cited in Notes, Reuters did extensive due diligence and expressed an interest in parts of the UPI service, but did not wish to maintain it in full.

Scripps wound up giving the agency away to two inexperienced businessmen, Douglas Ruhe (son of David Ruhe, a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Baháʼí Faith) and William Geissler, originally associated with two better-known partners, who soon departed. Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for $1. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Scripps first injected UPI with a $5 million cash balance, in acknowledgement of the $1.0 – $1.5 million per month that UPI was already losing. Facing news industry skepticism about their background and qualifications to run an international news agency, Ruhe and Geissler watched an increase in contract cancellations. Despite serious cash flow problems, they moved UPI's headquarters from New York City to Washington, DC, incurring significant additional costs due to construction cost overruns.

During this period, UPI's 25-year-old audio news actuality service for radio stations was renamed the United Press International Radio Network. But faced with recurring cash shortages and difficulty meeting payroll, the Ruhe-Geissler management sold UPI's foreign photo service and some rights to its US and foreign photos to the Reuters news agency.[20] It also sold UPI's U.S. photo library, which included the archives of predecessor Scripps photo agency Acme and the pictures and negatives of International News Photos, the picture component of Hearst's INS to the Bettman Archive. Bettman was later sold to Microsoft founder Bill Gates's separate Corbis Corporation, storing them underground in Pennsylvania and digitizing them for licensing, frequently without any notation of their UPI origins. In August 2011 Corbis announced a deal with AP to distribute each other's photos to their clients, effectively combining the pre-1983 UPI library with that of its former main rival for some marketing purposes.[21] In 2016 Corbis sold to the Visual China Group.[22]

UPI's remaining minority stake in UPITN was also sold and the agency was renamed Worldwide Television News (WTN). As with its photographs, UPI thereby lost all control of its newsfilm and video library, which is now held by WTN-successor Associated Press Television News, which entered the video news field long after UPI left it.

Years of mismanagement, missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed.[8] By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two Chapter 11 bankruptcies.[8][9] Mario Vázquez Raña, a Mexican media magnate, with a nominal American minority partner, Houston real estate developer Joseph Russo, purchased UPI out of bankruptcy for $40 million, losing millions during his short tenure, and firing numerous high-level staff.[8]

In 1988, Vázquez Raña sold UPI to Infotechnology, Inc., an information technology and venture capital company and parent company of cable TV's Financial News Network, both headed by Earl Brian, who also became UPI chairman.[8] In early 1991, Infotechnology itself filed for bankruptcy, announced layoffs at UPI and sought to terminate certain employee benefits in an attempt to keep UPI afloat. At that point, UPI was down to 585 employees.[10][23] Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy for the second time, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able.[23] In 1992, a group of Saudi investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million.[19]

By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices.[19] Although the Saudi-based investors claimed to have poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit.[19] The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to such websites as Excite and Yahoo.[19] At that point, UPI CEO Arnaud de Borchgrave orchestrated UPI's exit from its last major media niche, the broadcast news business that United Press had initiated in the 1930s. De Borchgrave maintained that "what was brilliant pioneering work on the part of UPI prior to World War II, with radio news, is now a static quantity and so far as I'm concerned, certainly doesn't fit into my plans for the future". He sought to shift UPI's dwindling resources into Internet-based delivery of newsletter services, focusing more on technical and diplomatic specialties than on general news. The rump UPI thus sold the client list of its still-significant radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival, the AP.[14][18]

Current ownership

 
United Press International office in Washington D.C., circa 2005

UPI was purchased in May 2000 by News World Communications, a media conglomerate founded by Unification movement founder Sun Myung Moon, which also owned The Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America.[11] The next day, UPI's White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, resigned her position, after working for UPI for 57 years.[24]

In 2007, as part of a restructuring to keep UPI in business and profitable, management cut 11 staff from its Washington, D.C. office and no longer had a reporter in the White House press corps or a bureau covering the United Nations.[11][25] UPI spokespersons and press releases said the company would be focusing instead on expanding operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, and reporting on security threats, intelligence and energy issues.[11][25] In 2008, UPI began UPIU, a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools, that allowed recent college graduates to post their work on the site but did not pay for stories.[26]

UPI sports awards

United Press International conferred sports awards annually until 1996. The awards were given to basketball players, basketball coaches, football players and athletes in general. The different awards were:

Basketball

Football

Notable alumni

While much of normal news agency work is little publicized, many UP/UPI news staffers have gained fame, either while with the agency or in later careers. They include journalists, news executives, novelists and high government officials.

Among them:

UPI reporters and photographers have won ten Pulitzer Prizes:

Key UP/UPI product and technical innovation dates

  • In 1908, UP began offering feature stories and using reporter bylines.[35]
  • In 1915, UP begins to use teleprinters, more recently known as Teletype machines.[2]
  • In the 1930s and 1940s, UP Newspictures predecessor agency Acme developed the International Unifax machine, the first automatic picture receiver.[36]
  • The "Ocean Press", a news service for ocean liners, was founded in the 1930s, as a corporate subsidiary of Scripps. It used copy from United Press and later United Press International. By 1959, it had 125 subscriber ships.[16]
  • In 1935, UP was the first major news service to offer news to broadcasters.[37]
  • In 1945, UP offered the first all-sports wire.[38]
  • In 1948, UP started the first international television news film service. Originally named "UP Movietone", in view of a partnership with the Movietone News service of 20th Century Fox, it went through several partnerships and name changes and was known as United Press International Television News or simply as UPITN, a name which also credited UPI's film and video service partner at the time, Britain's ITN television news service.[38]
  • In 1951, UP offered the first teletypesetter (TTS) service, enabling newspapers to automatically set and justify type from wire transmissions.[38]
  • In 1952 UP, absorbed the Scripps-owned Acme photo service to form UP Newspictures
  • In 1958 United Press absorbed Hearst's INS to create UPI
  • In 1958, UPI created the first wire service audio network, an offshoot of the film service above. UPI Audio provided news material to radio stations. It was renamed United Press International Radio Network in 1983.[18][38]
  • In 1974, UPI launched the first "high-speed" data newswire—operating at 1,200 WPM.[citation needed]
  • In 1978, UPI launched the first cable TV news network, UPI Newstime, using SSTV technology via satellite to relay the channel to cable TV companies nationwide in the USA.
  • In 1979, UPI along with Telecomputing Corp. of America began making the UPI world news report available to owners of home computers.[39]
  • In 1982, UPI pioneered a coding system allowing clients to choose stories based on topic, subtopic and location.[40]

See also

References

  1. ^ "About United Press International - About UPI". about.upi.com.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Joe Alex Morris (1957). "Deadline Every Minute The Story of the United Press - ARCHIVE.ORG ONLINE VERSION". Doubleday & Company.
  3. ^ a b c d "Scripps-Howard". Ohio History Central. ohiohistory.com.
  4. ^ a b c "UPI History". United Press International.
  5. ^ Eleonora W. Schoenebaum, ed. Political Profiles: The Truman Years (1978) pp 16–17
  6. ^ a b "Merger joins UP and INS". Milwaukee Journal. UPI. May 24, 1958. p. 2.
  7. ^ a b "UP, International News Service merged". Bend Bulletin. (Oregon). UPI. May 24, 1958. p. 1.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Atwater, James D. (December 24, 1989). "U.P.I.: Look Back in Sorrow (book review of Down to the Wire: UPI's Fight for Survival By Gregory Gordon and Ronald E. Cohen)". The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  9. ^ a b "UPI reaches deal to gain financing". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. April 28, 1985. p. 13A.
  10. ^ a b NY Times staff reporter (September 18, 1991). "U.P.I. Cuts More Employees". The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  11. ^ a b c d . Editor & Publisher. July 11, 2007. Archived from the original on May 11, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  12. ^ News World Communications no longer owns the Washington Times.CJR staff (December 22, 2010). "Who owns what - News World Communications, Inc". Columbia Journalism Review. GolfStyles Magazine, Middle Eastern Times, The Segye Ilbo (South Korea), The Sekai Nippo (Tokyo), Tiempos del Mundo (Online Only), The World and I. Wire Service: United Press International (UPI).
  13. ^ "About United Press International Products". United Press International. Retrieved July 11, 2011.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "Upi R.i.p. As A New Book By Two Veterans Of United Press International Shows, The World Lost More Than A Scrappy Wire Service When Upi Died. It Lost A Vital Witness To History". Chicago Tribune. May 4, 2003.
  15. ^ a b c d Staff reporter (June 2, 1958). . Time. Archived from the original on January 14, 2009.
  16. ^ a b N.Y. Times staff reporter (April 27, 1960). "U.P.I. Calls 1959 Its Biggest Year - News Agency Head Reports a Record Clients Roll of 6,208 in 92 Countries" (PDF). The New York Times. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  17. ^ a b Gary Haynes (2006). "A History of United Press International Newspictures Service". Retrieved August 2, 2011.
  18. ^ a b c "UPI Radio: 40 Years Of Sound". Radio World. IMAS Publishing. 1999. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  19. ^ a b c d e Spiegel, Peter (June 1, 1998). "Old dog, new tricks?". Forbes. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  20. ^ NY Times staff reporter (June 26, 1984). "Photo Accord". The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  21. ^ Kaplan, David (August 23, 2011). "The AP And Corbis Combine Image Libraries In Distribution Deal". GigaOM: paidContent. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  22. ^ Reuters Editorial. "Visual China buys Corbis Entertainment". U.S. Retrieved May 21, 2018. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  23. ^ a b Jones, Alex S. (August 28, 1991). "The Media Business; U.P.I. Planning to File for Bankruptcy Protection Today". The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  24. ^ Stout, David (May 17, 2000). "Helen Thomas, Washington Fixture, Resigns as U.P.I. Reporter". The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  25. ^ a b Joe Strupp (July 12, 2007). . Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on May 11, 2011. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  26. ^ "UPI's journalism mentoring program for students worldwide". United Press International. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  27. ^ United Press International (July 6, 2002). "Former UPI president, Rod Beaton dies". United Press International. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  28. ^ "Roderick Beaton, 79, Former U.P.I. Leader". The New York Times. New York, New York. Associated Press. July 14, 2002. p. 33. Retrieved January 13, 2022.; "Rod Beaton". Asbury Park Press. Asbury Park, New Jersey. Associated Press. July 9, 2002. p. 20. 
  29. ^ "Veteran Detroit-Area Sportswriter Jack Berry Named Recipient of PGA Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award - The Golf Wire". The Golf Wire. February 15, 2007. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  30. ^ Shapira, Ian (October 25, 2011). . The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 18, 2012.
  31. ^ "TONY HILLERMAN'S CROSS-CULTURAL MYSTERY NOVELS". The New York Times. August 16, 1988.
  32. ^ Hevesi, Dennis (August 1, 2011). "Elmer Lower, Former President of ABC News, Dies at 98". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2011.
  33. ^ "Ron Nessen: inside, looking out (December 15, 1974)".
  34. ^ "Pulitzer Prize winners". Pulitzer.org.
  35. ^ "UPI History Milestones 1907 - 1910". UPI - Centennial Anniversary. United Press International. 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  36. ^ "United Press International Unifax Machine in Use". Corbis Images. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  37. ^ "UPI History Milestones 1921 - 1940". UPI - Centennial Anniversary. United Press International. 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  38. ^ a b c d "UPI History Milestones 1941 - 1960". UPI - Centennial Anniversary: 1907 - 2007. United Press International. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  39. ^ "UPI History Milestones 1961 - 1980". UPI Centennial Anniversary. United Press International. 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  40. ^ "UPI History Milestones 1981-2000". UPI Centennial Anniversary. United Press International. 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2011.

Notes

  • Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else. Princeton Architectural Press. Associated Press. June 17, 2007. pp. 432. ISBN 978-1-56898-689-0.
  • Baillie, Hugh (1959). High Tension: The Recollections of Hugh Baillie. Harper & Brothers. p. 300. ISBN 0-8369-1543-7.
  • Bartholomew, Frank H. (1983). Bart, Memoirs of Frank H. Bartholomew: President, United Press, 1955–58, United Press International, 1958–62. Sonoma, Calif.: Vine Brook Press. pp. 231. OCLC 39551960.
  • Cronkite, Walter (November 27, 1996). A Reporter's Life (1st ed.). Knopf. pp. 400. ISBN 0-394-57879-1.
  • Daniloff, Nicholas (April 7, 2008). Of Spies and Spokesmen: My Life As a Cold War Correspondent. University of Missouri Press. pp. 440. ISBN 978-0-8262-1804-9.
  • Fenby, Jonathan (February 12, 1986). The International News Services. Schocken Books. pp. 275. ISBN 0-8052-3995-2.
  • Gordon, Gregory & Cohen, Ronald E. (1990). Down to the Wire: UPI's Fight for Survival. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. pp. 429. ISBN 0-07-023804-9. OCLC 19519378.
  • Harnett, Richard & Ferguson, Billy G. (January 1, 2003). UNIPRESS: United Press International, Covering the 20th Century. Fulcrum Publishing. p. 384. ISBN 1-55591-481-0.
  • Haynes, Gary (September 2006). Picture This! The Inside Story and Classic Photos of UPI Newspictures. Bulfinch Press. p. 256. ISBN 0-8212-5758-7.
  • Helms, Richard, with William Hood. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Random House, 2003.
  • Lewis, Boyd DeWolf (1981). Not Always a Spectator: A Newsman's Story. Vienna, Va.: Wolf's Head Press. pp. 327. OCLC 7968758.
  • Morris, Joe Alex (October 31, 1968). Deadline Every Minute: The Story of the United Press. Praeger. p. 356. ISBN 0-8371-0175-1.
  • Olson, Lynn & Cloud, Stanley W. (October 31, 1997). The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism. Mariner Books. p. 445. ISBN 0-395-87753-9.
  • Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
  • Read, Donald (1992). The Power of News. The History of Reuters 1849–1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821776-5.
  • Schonfeld, Reese (January 1, 2001). Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN. Collins. p. 432. ISBN 0-06-019746-3.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (June 1979). The American Wire Services. Arno Press. p. 453. ISBN 0-405-11774-4.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (January 1, 1989). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 1: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865. Northwestern University Press. p. 370. ISBN 0-8101-0818-6.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (February 1, 1990). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 2: The Rush to Institution: From 1865 to 1920. Northwestern University Press. pp. 366. ISBN 0-8101-0819-4.
  • Scripps, E.W.; McCabe, Charles (March 15, 2007). Damned Old Crank: A Self Portrait of E. W. Scripps Drawn From His Unpublished Writings. McCabe Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-4067-6151-1.
  • United Press International and American Heritage Magazine (1983) [1964]. Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy. American Heritage Publishing Co. p. 143. ISBN 0-671-50046-5.

External links

Current

  • Official website  
  • Spanish-language website
  • UPIU, UPI's multimedia platform for journalism education

History

  • Downhold.Org—UPI Alum site
  • UPI's Trail of Tears—subset of above: UPI history and memories
  • The Downhold Project—collaborative UPI history project site
  • Dead Microphone Club—UPI Radio Network Alum site

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UPI redirects here For the Indian payment system see Unified Payments Interface For other uses see UPI disambiguation United Press International UPI is an American international news agency whose newswires photo news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers magazines radio and television stations for most of the 20th century At its peak it had more than 6 000 media subscribers Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982 and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its main U S rival the Associated Press UPI has concentrated on smaller information market niches United Press InternationalIndustryJournalismFounded1907 as United Press Associations 1958 as United Press International Headquarters1200 N Federal Highway Suite 200 Boca Raton Florida 33432 1 ParentNews World CommunicationsWebsiteupi com Contents 1 History 1 1 United Press Associations 1 2 United Press International 1 3 UP UPI Newspictures Newsfilm and Audio Radio Network 1 4 Decline 1 5 Current ownership 2 UPI sports awards 2 1 Basketball 2 2 Football 3 Notable alumni 4 Key UP UPI product and technical innovation dates 5 See also 6 References 7 Notes 8 External linksHistory Edit News room of United Press in New York 1933 Formally named United Press Associations for incorporation and legal purposes but publicly known and identified as United Press or UP the news agency was created by the 1907 uniting of three smaller news syndicates by the Midwest newspaper publisher E W Scripps 2 3 4 It was headed by Hugh Baillie 1890 1966 from 1935 to 1955 At the time of his retirement UP had 2 900 clients in the United States and 1 500 abroad 5 In 1958 it became United Press International after absorbing the International News Service INS in May 6 7 As either UP or UPI the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world competing domestically for about 90 years with the Associated Press AP and internationally with AP Reuters and Agence France Presse AFP At its peak UPI had more than 2 000 full time employees and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries it had more than 6 000 media subscribers With the rising popularity of television news the business of UPI began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers its chief client category began to fall Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company 8 The E W Scripps Company controlled United Press until its absorption of William Randolph Hearst s smaller competing agency INS in 1958 to form UPI With the Hearst Corporation as a minority partner UPI continued under Scripps management until 1982 2 3 4 Since its sale in 1982 UPI has changed ownership several times and was twice in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization 9 With each change in ownership came deeper service and staff cutbacks and changes of focus and a corresponding shrinkage of its traditional media customer base Since the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its one time major rival the AP UPI has concentrated on smaller information market niches It no longer services media organizations in a major way 10 In 2000 UPI was purchased by News World Communications an international news media company founded in 1976 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon 11 12 It now maintains a news website and photo service and electronically publishes several information product packages Based mostly on aggregation from other sources on the Web and gathered by a small editorial staff and stringers UPI s daily content consists of a newsbrief summary service called NewsTrack which includes general business sports science health and entertainment reports and Quirks in the News It also sells a premium service which has deeper coverage and analysis of emerging threats the security industry and energy resources UPI s content is presented in text video and photo formats in English Spanish and Arabic 13 UPI s main office is in the Miami metropolitan area and it maintains office locations in five other countries and uses freelance journalists in other major cities United Press Associations Edit Portrait photograph of E W Scripps c 1912 Beginning with the Cleveland Press publisher E W Scripps 1854 1926 created the first chain of newspapers in the United States Because the then recently reorganized Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers most of them evening dailies in competition with existing AP franchise holders in 1907 Scripps merged three smaller syndicates under his ownership or control the Publishers Press Association the Scripps McRae Press Association and the Scripps News Association to form United Press Associations with headquarters in New York City 2 3 4 Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency also named United Press that existed in the late 1800s partly in cooperation with management of the original New York based AP and partly in existential competition with two Chicago based organizations also using the AP name as detailed at Associated Press and in AP s 2007 history Breaking News How the Associated Press Has Covered War Peace and Everything Else cited in Notes 2 3 Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP s Scripps required that there be no restrictions on who could buy news from his news service and he made the new UP service available to anyone including his competitors Scripps also hoped to make a profit from selling that news to papers owned by others At that time and until World War II most newspapers relied on news agencies for stories outside their immediate geographic areas 2 14 Despite strong newspaper industry opposition UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935 years before competitor AP controlled by the newspaper industry did likewise Scripps United Press was considered a scrappy alternative news source to the AP UP reporters were called Unipressers and were noted for their fiercely aggressive and competitive streak 14 Another hallmark of the company s culture was little formal training of reporters new hires were often thrust into a sink or swim situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject They were weaned on UP s famous and well documented though frequently misappropriated and misquoted slogan of Get it first but FIRST get it RIGHT 2 Despite controversy UP and later UPI became a common training ground for generations of journalists 14 Walter Cronkite who started with United Press in Kansas City gained fame for his coverage of World War II in Europe and turned down Edward R Murrow s first offer of a CBS job to stay with UP but who later went on to anchor the CBS Evening News once said I felt every Unipresser got up in the morning saying This is the day I m going to beat the hell out of AP That was part of the spirit We knew we were undermanned But we knew we could do a darn good job despite that and so many times we did 14 Despite that like all agencies that deal with huge volumes of timely information UP and later UPI had its share of remembered mistakes As recounted in the various printed histories of UPI cited in Notes the most famous one came early in its history UP s president Roy W Howard then traveling in France telegraphed that the 1918 armistice ending World War I had been declared four days before it happened Howard s reputation survived and he later became a Scripps partner whose name appeared in one of the Scripps subsidiary companies Scripps Howard But the mistake dogged UP UPI for generations Still the agency s reporters were often able to tell stories more quickly and accurately although they were usually outnumbered by the competition In 1950 for example UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival the AP The New York Times later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it 2 United Press International Edit Frank Bartholomew the last UP president to ascend to the agency s top job directly from its news rather than sales ranks took over in 1955 and according to his memoirs cited in Notes was obsessed with merging UP with the International News Service a news agency that had been founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1909 following Scripps lead Bartholomew succeeded in putting the I in UPI in 1958 when UP and INS merged to become United Press International on May 24 6 7 The new UPI now had 6 000 employees and 5 000 subscribers about a thousand of them newspapers 14 15 The merger was aimed at creating a stronger competitor for the Associated Press and a stronger economic entity than either UP or INS The newly formed United Press International UPI had 950 client newspapers 15 Fearing possible antitrust issues with the Eisenhower Administration Justice Department Scripps and Hearst rushed the merger through with unusual speed and secrecy Although all UP employees were retained most INS employees lost their jobs with practically no warning A relative few did join the new UPI and the columns of popular INS writers such as Bob Considine Louella Parsons and Ruth Montgomery were carried by UPI 15 Rival AP was a publishers cooperative and could assess its members to help pay the extraordinary costs of covering major news wars the Olympic Games national political conventions UPI clients in contrast paid a fixed annual rate depending on individual contracts UPI could not always ask them to help shoulder the extraordinary coverage costs In its heyday newspapers typically paid UPI about half what they paid AP in the same cities for the same services At one point for example the Chicago Sun Times paid AP 12 500 a week but UPI only 5 000 the Wall Street Journal paid AP 36 000 a week but UPI only 19 300 The AP which serviced 1 243 newspapers at the time remained UPI s main competitor 14 15 In 1959 UPI had 6 208 clients in 92 countries and territories 234 news and picture bureaus and an annual payroll of 34 000 000 316 052 511 in today s dollars 14 16 But the UP INS merger involved another business component that was to hurt the new UPI company badly in later years Because INS had been a subsidiary of Hearst s King Features Syndicate and Scripps controlled several other newspaper syndicates both companies feared possible antitrust issues So they deliberately kept their respective syndicates out of the combined UPI company That move cost UPI the revenues of its previous United Feature Syndicate subsidiary which in later years made large profits on the syndication of Peanuts and other popular comic strips and columns UPI had an advantage of independence over the AP in reporting on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s Because the AP was a cooperative essentially owned by the newspapers those in the South influenced its coverage of the racial unrest and protests often ignoring minimizing or slanting the reporting 14 UPI did not have that sort of pressure and management according to UPI reporters and photographers of the day allowed them much freedom in chronicling the events of the civil rights struggle 14 White House reporter Helen Thomas became the public face of UPI as she was seen at televised press conferences beginning in the early 1960s 14 UPI famously scooped the AP in reporting the assassination of US President John Kennedy on Friday November 22 1963 14 UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith was an eyewitness and he commandeered the press car s only phone to dictate the story to UPI as AP reporter Jack Bell tried without success to wrest the phone away so he could call his office 8 Smith and UPI won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting 14 UP UPI Newspictures Newsfilm and Audio Radio Network Edit United Press had no direct wirephoto service until 1952 when it absorbed co owned ACME Newspictures under pressure from parent company Scripps to better compete with AP s news and photo services 17 By that time UP was also deeply involved with the newer visual medium of television In 1948 it entered into a partnership with 20th Century Fox subsidiary Fox Movietone News to shoot newsfilm for television stations That service United Press Movietone or UPMT was a pioneer in newsfilm syndication and numbered among its clients major US and foreign networks and local stations including for many years the early TV operation of ABC News In subsequent decades it underwent several changes in partnerships and names becoming best known as United Press International Television News UPITN Senior UPITN executives later helped Ted Turner create CNN with its first two presidents Reese Schonfeld and Burt Reinhardt coming from UPITN ranks The UPI Audio actuality service for radio stations created in 1958 and later renamed the United Press International Radio Network was a spinoff from the newsfilm service and eventually provided news material to more than a thousand radio stations and US and foreign networks including NPR 18 Decline Edit UPI came close to the size of the AP in the early 1960s but as publishing companies began to pare their evening newspapers it was dropped by papers that could no longer afford to subscribe to both UPI and the AP 14 UPI s failure to develop a television presence or subsidiary television news service has also been cited as one of the causes of its decline 14 By the early 1980s the number of staffers was down to 1 800 and there were just 100 news bureaus 19 Under pressure from some of E W Scripps heirs the Scripps company which had been underwriting UPI s expenses at a loss for at least two decades began trying to transfer control of UPI in the early 1980s It tried to bring in additional newspaper industry partners and when that failed engaged in serious negotiations with British competitor Reuters which wanted to increase its US presence As detailed in Down to the Wire by Gordon and Cohen cited in Notes Reuters did extensive due diligence and expressed an interest in parts of the UPI service but did not wish to maintain it in full Scripps wound up giving the agency away to two inexperienced businessmen Douglas Ruhe son of David Ruhe a member of the Universal House of Justice the supreme governing body of the Bahaʼi Faith and William Geissler originally associated with two better known partners who soon departed Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for 1 Under the terms of the purchase agreement Scripps first injected UPI with a 5 million cash balance in acknowledgement of the 1 0 1 5 million per month that UPI was already losing Facing news industry skepticism about their background and qualifications to run an international news agency Ruhe and Geissler watched an increase in contract cancellations Despite serious cash flow problems they moved UPI s headquarters from New York City to Washington DC incurring significant additional costs due to construction cost overruns During this period UPI s 25 year old audio news actuality service for radio stations was renamed the United Press International Radio Network But faced with recurring cash shortages and difficulty meeting payroll the Ruhe Geissler management sold UPI s foreign photo service and some rights to its US and foreign photos to the Reuters news agency 20 It also sold UPI s U S photo library which included the archives of predecessor Scripps photo agency Acme and the pictures and negatives of International News Photos the picture component of Hearst s INS to the Bettman Archive Bettman was later sold to Microsoft founder Bill Gates s separate Corbis Corporation storing them underground in Pennsylvania and digitizing them for licensing frequently without any notation of their UPI origins In August 2011 Corbis announced a deal with AP to distribute each other s photos to their clients effectively combining the pre 1983 UPI library with that of its former main rival for some marketing purposes 21 In 2016 Corbis sold to the Visual China Group 22 UPI s remaining minority stake in UPITN was also sold and the agency was renamed Worldwide Television News WTN As with its photographs UPI thereby lost all control of its newsfilm and video library which is now held by WTN successor Associated Press Television News which entered the video news field long after UPI left it Years of mismanagement missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed 8 By 1984 UPI had descended into the first of two Chapter 11 bankruptcies 8 9 Mario Vazquez Rana a Mexican media magnate with a nominal American minority partner Houston real estate developer Joseph Russo purchased UPI out of bankruptcy for 40 million losing millions during his short tenure and firing numerous high level staff 8 In 1988 Vazquez Rana sold UPI to Infotechnology Inc an information technology and venture capital company and parent company of cable TV s Financial News Network both headed by Earl Brian who also became UPI chairman 8 In early 1991 Infotechnology itself filed for bankruptcy announced layoffs at UPI and sought to terminate certain employee benefits in an attempt to keep UPI afloat At that point UPI was down to 585 employees 10 23 Later that year UPI filed for bankruptcy for the second time asking for relief from 50 million in debt so that it could be sale able 23 In 1992 a group of Saudi investors ARA Group International AGI bought the bankrupt UPI for 4 million 19 By 1998 UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices 19 Although the Saudi based investors claimed to have poured more than 120 million into UPI it had failed to turn a profit 19 The company had begun to sell Internet adapted products to such websites as Excite and Yahoo 19 At that point UPI CEO Arnaud de Borchgrave orchestrated UPI s exit from its last major media niche the broadcast news business that United Press had initiated in the 1930s De Borchgrave maintained that what was brilliant pioneering work on the part of UPI prior to World War II with radio news is now a static quantity and so far as I m concerned certainly doesn t fit into my plans for the future He sought to shift UPI s dwindling resources into Internet based delivery of newsletter services focusing more on technical and diplomatic specialties than on general news The rump UPI thus sold the client list of its still significant radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival the AP 14 18 Current ownership Edit United Press International office in Washington D C circa 2005 UPI was purchased in May 2000 by News World Communications a media conglomerate founded by Unification movement founder Sun Myung Moon which also owned The Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea Japan and South America 11 The next day UPI s White House correspondent Helen Thomas resigned her position after working for UPI for 57 years 24 In 2007 as part of a restructuring to keep UPI in business and profitable management cut 11 staff from its Washington D C office and no longer had a reporter in the White House press corps or a bureau covering the United Nations 11 25 UPI spokespersons and press releases said the company would be focusing instead on expanding operations in the Middle East Central Asia and Africa and reporting on security threats intelligence and energy issues 11 25 In 2008 UPI began UPIU a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools that allowed recent college graduates to post their work on the site but did not pay for stories 26 UPI sports awards EditUnited Press International conferred sports awards annually until 1996 The awards were given to basketball players basketball coaches football players and athletes in general The different awards were UPI Athlete of the YearBasketball Edit UPI College Basketball Coach of the Year UPI College Basketball Player of the YearFootball Edit UPI College Football Player of the Year UPI College Lineman of the Year UPI NFC Player of the Year UPI AFL AFC Player of the Year UPI NFL Rookie of the Year UPI NFL Player of the YearNotable alumni EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources United Press International news newspapers books scholar JSTOR October 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message While much of normal news agency work is little publicized many UP UPI news staffers have gained fame either while with the agency or in later careers They include journalists news executives novelists and high government officials Among them James Atherton veteran news photographer who caught iconic moments through a lens in Washington D C for over forty years Rod Beaton president and chief executive officer of United Press International from 1972 to 1982 27 28 David Belnap UPI Latin American Bureau Chief and later Foreign Desk Editor for the Los Angeles Times Jack Berry UPI correspondent in Lansing Michigan from 1956 to 1959 29 Arnaud de Borchgrave veteran foreign correspondent and UPI executive Myram Borders longtime Las Vegas bureau manager who broke the story of Elvis Presley s marriage David Brinkley co anchor of NBC s Huntley Brinkley Report and anchor of ABC s This Week Lucien Carr contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the Beat Generation movement Marquis Childs 1903 1990 later Washington Calling columnist Raymond Clapper originator of the term smoke filled room 2 Richard Cohen Washington Post columnist Charles Collingwood CBS News anchor host of A Tour of the White House with Mrs John F Kennedy Gail Collins New York Times columnist Marie Colvin long time war correspondent for The Sunday Times Bob Considine author of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and ABC and CBS radio anchor Kent Cooper who later became the longtime GM of rival Associated Press Walter Cronkite long time anchor of the CBS Evening News Bill Downs CBS and ABC reporter first to deliver a live broadcast from Normandy after D Day Allen Drury Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Stephen Early White House Press Secretary for Franklin D Roosevelt Marc S Ellenbogen President The Prague Society for International Cooperation Chair Global Panel Foundation Oscar Fraley Untouchables co author Thomas Friedman Three time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Joseph L Galloway military author Martha Gellhorn legendary war correspondent Carmen Gentile award winning journalist author and founder of Postindustrial Media Henry Tilton Gorrell filed first report on D Day Richard Helms onetime CIA Director who interviewed Adolf Hitler for United Press during the 1936 Olympics 30 Seymour Hersh Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times the AP and The New Yorker Don Hewitt 60 Minutes creator and producer worked for UP Newspictures predecessor Acme Newsphotos 14 17 Tony Hillerman novelist 31 Les Hinton ex Dow Jones CEO Richard C Hottelet CBS News United Nations correspondent last surviving of the Murrow Boys Brit Hume ABC News White House Correspondent and Fox News anchor David Hume Kennerly 1970s White House photographer Edward M Korry U S Ambassador to Ethiopia and Chile Brian Lamb C SPAN founder Larry LeSueur CBS News and Voice of America White House Correspondent two time Peabody Award winner Elmer Lower early ABC News president 32 Eugene Lyons former UP correspondent to Moscow first Western journalist to interview Joseph Stalin Jim McGlincy reporter for the New York Post New York Daily News Newsweek and CBS News Laurence Meredith UPI international correspondent UPI Portugal Manager Royal Air Force veteran Knowlton Nash Canadian journalist senior anchor of CBC Television s flagship news program The National Ron Nessen White House Press Secretary for Gerald Ford 33 Edwin Newman CBS and NBC anchor moderator of 1976 and 1984 presidential debates Keith Olbermann correspondent and host for CNN ESPN MSNBC Current TV and GQ magazine Eugene Patterson Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper editor and columnist Marjorie Paxson influential women s page editor Doc Quigg journalist George Reedy White House Press Secretary for Lyndon Johnson Harrison Salisbury Pulitzer Prize winner creator of The New York Times op ed page Reese Schonfeld co founder of CNN Robert J Serling novelist and brother of Rod Serling Eric Sevareid CBS News reporter three time Peabody Award winner Neil Sheehan reporter who broke the Pentagon Papers story for The New York Times Lewis Shollenberger CBS News reporter ABC News Director of Radio Liberty Daniel Silva novelist and former CNN producer H Allen Smith best selling author Howard K Smith ABC Evening News anchor Stan Stearns photographer known for picture of John F Kennedy Jr saluting his father s casket Cyrus Leo Sulzberger II Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times Helen Thomas UPI reporter from 1943 until 2000 UPI White House Correspondent from 1961 until 2000 Stanley Tretick founding photographer People magazine Hubert van Es Saigon evacuation photographer Kate Webb war correspondent first to reach Saigon during Tet Offensive Wee Kim Wee 4th President of Singapore Weegee Naked City photographer Paul White the founding director of CBS News Steve Wilstein who later broke the steroids scandals in baseball for the APUPI reporters and photographers have won ten Pulitzer Prizes Russell Jones International Reporting 1957 Andrew Lopez News Photography 1960 Yasushi Nagao News Photography 1961 Merriman Smith National Reporting 1964 Kyoichi Sawada News Photography 1966 Toshio Sakai Feature Photography 1968 Lucinda Franks and Thomas Powers National Reporting 1971 David Hume Kennerly Feature Photography 1972 John H Blair Spot News Photography 1978 Jahangir Razmi Spot News Photography 1980 34 Key UP UPI product and technical innovation dates EditIn 1908 UP began offering feature stories and using reporter bylines 35 In 1915 UP begins to use teleprinters more recently known as Teletype machines 2 In the 1930s and 1940s UP Newspictures predecessor agency Acme developed the International Unifax machine the first automatic picture receiver 36 The Ocean Press a news service for ocean liners was founded in the 1930s as a corporate subsidiary of Scripps It used copy from United Press and later United Press International By 1959 it had 125 subscriber ships 16 In 1935 UP was the first major news service to offer news to broadcasters 37 In 1945 UP offered the first all sports wire 38 In 1948 UP started the first international television news film service Originally named UP Movietone in view of a partnership with the Movietone News service of 20th Century Fox it went through several partnerships and name changes and was known as United Press International Television News or simply as UPITN a name which also credited UPI s film and video service partner at the time Britain s ITN television news service 38 In 1951 UP offered the first teletypesetter TTS service enabling newspapers to automatically set and justify type from wire transmissions 38 In 1952 UP absorbed the Scripps owned Acme photo service to form UP Newspictures In 1958 United Press absorbed Hearst s INS to create UPI In 1958 UPI created the first wire service audio network an offshoot of the film service above UPI Audio provided news material to radio stations It was renamed United Press International Radio Network in 1983 18 38 In 1974 UPI launched the first high speed data newswire operating at 1 200 WPM citation needed In 1978 UPI launched the first cable TV news network UPI Newstime using SSTV technology via satellite to relay the channel to cable TV companies nationwide in the USA In 1979 UPI along with Telecomputing Corp of America began making the UPI world news report available to owners of home computers 39 In 1982 UPI pioneered a coding system allowing clients to choose stories based on topic subtopic and location 40 See also Edit Journalism portal United States portalList of UPI reporters List of online image archives List of news agenciesReferences Edit About United Press International About UPI about upi com a b c d e f g h i Joe Alex Morris 1957 Deadline Every Minute The Story of the United Press ARCHIVE ORG ONLINE VERSION Doubleday amp Company a b c d Scripps Howard Ohio History Central ohiohistory com a b c UPI History United Press International Eleonora W Schoenebaum ed Political Profiles The Truman Years 1978 pp 16 17 a b Merger joins UP and INS Milwaukee Journal UPI May 24 1958 p 2 a b UP International News Service merged Bend Bulletin Oregon UPI May 24 1958 p 1 a b c d e f Atwater James D December 24 1989 U P I Look Back in Sorrow book review of Down to the Wire UPI s Fight for Survival By Gregory Gordon and Ronald E Cohen The New York Times Retrieved March 15 2011 a b UPI reaches deal to gain financing Eugene Register Guard Oregon Associated Press April 28 1985 p 13A a b NY Times staff reporter September 18 1991 U P I Cuts More Employees The New York Times Retrieved March 16 2011 a b c d UPI Staff Cuts Include White House Correspondent Editor amp Publisher July 11 2007 Archived from the original on May 11 2011 Retrieved March 15 2011 News World Communications no longer owns the Washington Times CJR staff December 22 2010 Who owns what News World Communications Inc Columbia Journalism Review GolfStyles Magazine Middle Eastern Times The Segye Ilbo South Korea The Sekai Nippo Tokyo Tiempos del Mundo Online Only The World and I Wire Service United Press International UPI About United Press International Products United Press International Retrieved July 11 2011 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Upi R i p As A New Book By Two Veterans Of United Press International Shows The World Lost More Than A Scrappy Wire Service When Upi Died It Lost A Vital Witness To History Chicago Tribune May 4 2003 a b c d Staff reporter June 2 1958 The Press New York May 24 UPI Time Archived from the original on January 14 2009 a b N Y Times staff reporter April 27 1960 U P I Calls 1959 Its Biggest Year News Agency Head Reports a Record Clients Roll of 6 208 in 92 Countries PDF The New York Times Archived PDF from the original on October 9 2022 Retrieved March 16 2011 a b Gary Haynes 2006 A History of United Press International Newspictures Service Retrieved August 2 2011 a b c UPI Radio 40 Years Of Sound Radio World IMAS Publishing 1999 Retrieved July 26 2011 a b c d e Spiegel Peter June 1 1998 Old dog new tricks Forbes Retrieved March 15 2011 NY Times staff reporter June 26 1984 Photo Accord The New York Times Retrieved March 16 2011 Kaplan David August 23 2011 The AP And Corbis Combine Image Libraries In Distribution Deal GigaOM paidContent Retrieved March 9 2013 Reuters Editorial Visual China buys Corbis Entertainment U S Retrieved May 21 2018 a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a author has generic name help a b Jones Alex S August 28 1991 The Media Business U P I Planning to File for Bankruptcy Protection Today The New York Times Retrieved March 16 2011 Stout David May 17 2000 Helen Thomas Washington Fixture Resigns as U P I Reporter The New York Times Retrieved March 15 2011 a b Joe Strupp July 12 2007 UPI Closing Long Running U N Bureau Most Senior Reporter Laid off Editor amp Publisher Archived from the original on May 11 2011 Retrieved March 16 2011 UPI s journalism mentoring program for students worldwide United Press International Retrieved March 16 2011 United Press International July 6 2002 Former UPI president Rod Beaton dies United Press International Retrieved January 13 2022 Roderick Beaton 79 Former U P I Leader The New York Times New York New York Associated Press July 14 2002 p 33 Retrieved January 13 2022 Rod Beaton Asbury Park Press Asbury Park New Jersey Associated Press July 9 2002 p 20 Veteran Detroit Area Sportswriter Jack Berry Named Recipient of PGA Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award The Golf Wire The Golf Wire February 15 2007 Retrieved January 1 2022 Shapira Ian October 25 2011 How a letter on Hitler s stationery written to a boy in Jersey reached the CIA The Washington Post Archived from the original on February 18 2012 TONY HILLERMAN S CROSS CULTURAL MYSTERY NOVELS The New York Times August 16 1988 Hevesi Dennis August 1 2011 Elmer Lower Former President of ABC News Dies at 98 The New York Times Retrieved August 14 2011 Ron Nessen inside looking out December 15 1974 Pulitzer Prize winners Pulitzer org UPI History Milestones 1907 1910 UPI Centennial Anniversary United Press International 2007 Retrieved March 16 2011 United Press International Unifax Machine in Use Corbis Images Retrieved March 16 2011 UPI History Milestones 1921 1940 UPI Centennial Anniversary United Press International 2007 Retrieved March 16 2011 a b c d UPI History Milestones 1941 1960 UPI Centennial Anniversary 1907 2007 United Press International Retrieved March 15 2011 UPI History Milestones 1961 1980 UPI Centennial Anniversary United Press International 2007 Retrieved March 16 2011 UPI History Milestones 1981 2000 UPI Centennial Anniversary United Press International 2007 Retrieved March 16 2011 Notes EditBreaking News How the Associated Press Has Covered War Peace and Everything Else Princeton Architectural Press Associated Press June 17 2007 pp 432 ISBN 978 1 56898 689 0 Baillie Hugh 1959 High Tension The Recollections of Hugh Baillie Harper amp Brothers p 300 ISBN 0 8369 1543 7 Bartholomew Frank H 1983 Bart Memoirs of Frank H Bartholomew President United Press 1955 58 United Press International 1958 62 Sonoma Calif Vine Brook Press pp 231 OCLC 39551960 Cronkite Walter November 27 1996 A Reporter s Life 1st ed Knopf pp 400 ISBN 0 394 57879 1 Daniloff Nicholas April 7 2008 Of Spies and Spokesmen My Life As a Cold War Correspondent University of Missouri Press pp 440 ISBN 978 0 8262 1804 9 Fenby Jonathan February 12 1986 The International News Services Schocken Books pp 275 ISBN 0 8052 3995 2 Gordon Gregory amp Cohen Ronald E 1990 Down to the Wire UPI s Fight for Survival New York McGraw Hill Publishing Company pp 429 ISBN 0 07 023804 9 OCLC 19519378 Harnett Richard amp Ferguson Billy G January 1 2003 UNIPRESS United Press International Covering the 20th Century Fulcrum Publishing p 384 ISBN 1 55591 481 0 Haynes Gary September 2006 Picture This The Inside Story and Classic Photos of UPI Newspictures Bulfinch Press p 256 ISBN 0 8212 5758 7 Helms Richard with William Hood A Look over My Shoulder A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency New York Random House 2003 Lewis Boyd DeWolf 1981 Not Always a Spectator A Newsman s Story Vienna Va Wolf s Head Press pp 327 OCLC 7968758 Morris Joe Alex October 31 1968 Deadline Every Minute The Story of the United Press Praeger p 356 ISBN 0 8371 0175 1 Olson Lynn amp Cloud Stanley W October 31 1997 The Murrow Boys Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism Mariner Books p 445 ISBN 0 395 87753 9 Powers Thomas The Man Who Kept the Secrets Richard Helms and the CIA New York Alfred A Knopf 1979 Read Donald 1992 The Power of News The History of Reuters 1849 1989 Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 821776 5 Schonfeld Reese January 1 2001 Me and Ted Against the World The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN Collins p 432 ISBN 0 06 019746 3 Schwarzlose Richard June 1979 The American Wire Services Arno Press p 453 ISBN 0 405 11774 4 Schwarzlose Richard January 1 1989 Nation s Newsbrokers Volume 1 The Formative Years From Pretelegraph to 1865 Northwestern University Press p 370 ISBN 0 8101 0818 6 Schwarzlose Richard February 1 1990 Nation s Newsbrokers Volume 2 The Rush to Institution From 1865 to 1920 Northwestern University Press pp 366 ISBN 0 8101 0819 4 Scripps E W McCabe Charles March 15 2007 Damned Old Crank A Self Portrait of E W Scripps Drawn From His Unpublished Writings McCabe Press p 259 ISBN 978 1 4067 6151 1 United Press International and American Heritage Magazine 1983 1964 Four Days The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy American Heritage Publishing Co p 143 ISBN 0 671 50046 5 External links EditCurrent Official website Spanish language website UPIU UPI s multimedia platform for journalism educationHistory Downhold Org UPI Alum site UPI s Trail of Tears subset of above UPI history and memories The Downhold Project collaborative UPI history project site Dead Microphone Club UPI Radio Network Alum site Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title United Press International amp oldid 1149327723, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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