United Press International
Encyclopedia
United Press International (UPI) is a once-major international news agency
, whose newswires, photo, news film
and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio
and television stations for most of the twentieth century. Today it is much smaller, with a different customer and product focus.
Formally named "United Press Associations," for incorporation and legal purposes, but publicly known and identified as "United Press" or "UP," it was created by the 1907 "uniting" of three smaller news syndicates by Midwest newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps
.
It became "United Press International" fifty-one years later with its absorption of the International News Service
or "INS".
As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing for about ninety years with the Associated Press
domestically and with AP, Reuters
and Agence France-Presse
internationally.
At its peak, UPI had more than 6,000 media subscribers; 2,000 full time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries. It began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall with the rising popularity of television news. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company.
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.
Since its sale that year, UPI has changed ownerships several times and was twice in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. 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 and no longer services media organizations in a major way.
In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications
, an international news media company which was founded in 1976 by Unification Church
leader Sun Myung Moon
.
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 the English, Spanish and Arabic languages.
UPI's main office is in Washington, D.C.
and it maintains office locations in five other countries and uses freelance journalists in other major cities.
, 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.
Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency, also named United Press, that existed in the late 1800s, sometimes in cooperation with management of the original New York-based AP and sometimes 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 below).
Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP's, Scripps insisted that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a 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.
Despite strong newspaper industry opposition, UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935, years before newspaper industry-controlled competitor AP 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 competitive streak.
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."
Another hallmark of the company's culture was that there was little formal training of reporters—new hires were often thrust into a sink-or-swim situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject, yet UP and later UPI became a training ground for a generation of journalists.
Generations of "Unipressers" (as cited in the introductory note by UPI VP and Editor-in-Chief Roger Tatarian
in an undated 28-page booklet: "For the beginning Unipresser") were weaned on UP's famous and well-documented (though frequently misappropriated and misquoted) slogan of "Get it first, but FIRST, get it RIGHT."
Despite that and 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 below, the most famous one came early in its history. UP's president, Roy 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.[4] In 1950, for example, UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival, the AP.[1] The New York Times later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it.[1]
, 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 the spring of 1958, when UP and INS merged to become United Press International.
The new UPI now had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, about a thousand of them newspapers.
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. Fearing possible anti-trust issues with the Eisenhower Administration Justice Department
, Scripps and Hearst rushed the merger through with unusual speed and in unusual secrecy.
All UP employees were retained, but most INS employees lost their jobs
with practically no warning, although some joined the new UPI and the columns of popular INS writers, such as Bob Considine
, Louella Parsons
and Ruth Montgomery
, were carried by UPI.
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. In 1959, UPI had 6,208 clients in 92 countries and territories, 234 news and picture bureaus, and an annual payroll of $34,000,000, ($) in today's dollars.
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, due to possible anti-trust issues, the two companies 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. 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.
White House reporter Helen Thomas
became the public face of UPI, as she was seen at televised press conferences beginning in the early 1960s. UPI famously scooped the AP in reporting the assassination of US President John Kennedy
on Friday, November 22, 1963. 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. Smith and UPI won a Pulitzer Prize
for this reporting.
service until 1952, when it absorbed co-owned Acme Newsphotos, under pressure from parent company Scripps to better compete with AP's news and photo services.
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
or 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
.
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 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 below, 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 and William Geissler, originally associated with two better-known partners, who soon departed. Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for the nominal price of $1 and were given a Scripps loan of $5 million, which was never repaid. 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 additional major 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. It also sold UPI'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, which continues to control the images of UPI and its predecessor agencies, 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.
UPI's remaining minority stake in United Press International Television News
(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. By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two Chapter 11 bankruptcies
. 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.
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. In early 1991, Infotechnology 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. Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able. In 1992, a group of Saudi
investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million.
By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices. Although the Saudi-based investors had poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit. The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to websites such as Excite and Yahoo. At that point, the CEO embarked on "an ambitious agenda" to turn UPI into an Internet media service that delivered the news in a dramatic and colorful manner. That year, UPI launched its first version of a direct-to-consumer website. UPI executives told Forbes that they also hoped to develop and provide subscription Internet news packages that were narrowly tailored for corporate and special-interest clients. In August 1999, UPI closed its radio network and broadcast wire operations, selling the remaining customer contracts to its longtime arch rival, AP. With that, UPI effectively left the traditional wire service field.
UPI was purchased in May 2000 by the Unification Church
's media corporation, News World Communications
, which, at the time, also owned the Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The next day, UPI's White House
correspondent, Helen Thomas
, resigned her position, after working for UPI 57 years.
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 has a reporter in the White House press corps
or a bureau covering the United Nations. 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. In 2008, UPI began UPIU, a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools, that allows recent college graduates to post their work on the site, but does not pay for stories.
As of March 2011, the UPI.com website reports that the organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with other addresses in Seoul, South Korea; Beirut, Lebanon; Tokyo, Japan; Santiago, Chile; and Hong Kong, China.
, David Brinkley
, Eric Sevareid
, Harrison Salisbury
, Richard C. Hottelet
, Howard K. Smith
, Edwin Newman
, the founding director of CBS News
, Paul White
, for whom the top award given by the broadcast news directors organization Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) is named, early ABC News
president Elmer Lower
, Merriman Smith, Helen Thomas
, Seymour Hersh
, Neil Sheehan
, Thomas Friedman
, Brit Hume
, Keith Olbermann
, sportswriter and Untouchables
co-author Oscar Fraley
, military author Joe Galloway, Saigon evacuation photographer Hubert van Es
, 1970's White House
photographer David Hume Kennerly
, White House spokesmen George Reedy
, Ron Nessen
and Larry Speakes
, onetime CIA Director Richard Helms
, who interviewed Adolf Hitler
for United Press during the 1936 Olympics, diplomat Edward M. Korry
, ex-Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton
and novelists Tony Hillerman
and Daniel Silva. Naked City photographer Weegee
and 60 Minutes
creator and producer Don Hewitt
worked for UP Newspictures predecessor Acme Newsphotos.
UPI reporters and photographers have won ten Pulitzer Prize
s: 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), and David Hume Kennerly
(Feature Photography, 1972). John H. Blair (spot news photography) a special assignment photographer for UPI, 1978; An originally unnamed UPI photographer whose identity was withheld because of risk in revolutionary Iran. (spot news photography), 1980. Decades later, the photographer of "Firing Squad in Iran" was identified as Jahangir Razmi
of Ettela'at, Iran.
History
News agency
A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...
, whose newswires, photo, news film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and television stations for most of the twentieth century. Today it is much smaller, with a different customer and product focus.
Formally named "United Press Associations," for incorporation and legal purposes, but publicly known and identified as "United Press" or "UP," it was created by the 1907 "uniting" of three smaller news syndicates by Midwest newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps
E. W. Scripps
Edward Willis Scripps , was an American newspaper publisher and founder of The E. W. Scripps Company, a diversified media conglomerate, and United Press news service. It became United Press International when International News Service merged with United Press in 1958. The E. W...
.
It became "United Press International" fifty-one years later with its absorption of the International News Service
International News Service
International News Service was a U.S.-based news agency founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.Established two years after the Scripps family founded the United Press Association, INS scrapped among the newswires...
or "INS".
As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing for about ninety years with the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
domestically and with AP, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
and Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
internationally.
At its peak, UPI had more than 6,000 media subscribers; 2,000 full time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries. It began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall with the rising popularity of television news. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company.
The E.W. Scripps Company controlled United Press until its absorption of William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's smaller competing agency, INS, in 1958 to form UPI.
With the Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
as a minority partner, UPI continued under Scripps management until 1982.
Since its sale that year, UPI has changed ownerships several times and was twice in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. 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 and no longer services media organizations in a major way.
In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications
News World Communications
News World Communications, Inc., is an international news media corporation. It was founded in New York City, in 1976, by Unification Church founder and leader, Sun Myung Moon. Its first two newspapers, The News World and the Spanish-language Noticias del Mundo, were published in New York from...
, an international news media company which was founded in 1976 by Unification Church
Unification Church
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea, as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity . In 1994, Moon gave the church...
leader Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon is the Korean founder and leader of the worldwide Unification Church. He is also the founder of many other organizations and projects...
.
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
Stringer (journalism)
In journalism, a stringer is a type of freelance journalist or photographer who contributes reports or photos to a news organization on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work....
, 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 the English, Spanish and Arabic languages.
UPI's main office is in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and it maintains office locations in five other countries and uses freelance journalists in other major cities.
United Press Associations
Beginning with the Cleveland PressCleveland Press
The Cleveland Press was a daily American newspaper published in Cleveland, Ohio from November 2, 1878, through June 17, 1982. From 1928 to 1966, the paper's editor was Louis Seltzer....
, publisher E. W. Scripps
E. W. Scripps
Edward Willis Scripps , was an American newspaper publisher and founder of The E. W. Scripps Company, a diversified media conglomerate, and United Press news service. It became United Press International when International News Service merged with United Press in 1958. The E. W...
(1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. Because the then recently reorganized Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
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.
Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency, also named United Press, that existed in the late 1800s, sometimes in cooperation with management of the original New York-based AP and sometimes in existential competition with two Chicago-based organizations also using the AP name (as detailed at Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
and in AP's 2007 history, Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else, cited below).
Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP's, Scripps insisted that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a 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
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, most newspapers relied on news agencies for stories outside their immediate geographic areas.
Despite strong newspaper industry opposition, UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935, years before newspaper industry-controlled competitor AP 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 competitive streak.
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
, who started with United Press in Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, gained fame for his coverage of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in Europe and turned down Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
's first offer of a CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
job to stay with UP, but who later went on to anchor the CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
, 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."
Another hallmark of the company's culture was that there was little formal training of reporters—new hires were often thrust into a sink-or-swim situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject, yet UP and later UPI became a training ground for a generation of journalists.
Generations of "Unipressers" (as cited in the introductory note by UPI VP and Editor-in-Chief Roger Tatarian
Roger Tatarian
H. Roger Tatarian was vice-president and editor-in-chief of United Press International, a worldwide news-reporting service that supplied stories to thousands of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast outlets.-Background and youth:...
in an undated 28-page booklet: "For the beginning Unipresser") were weaned on UP's famous and well-documented (though frequently misappropriated and misquoted) slogan of "Get it first, but FIRST, get it RIGHT."
Despite that and 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 below, the most famous one came early in its history. UP's president, Roy 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.[4] In 1950, for example, UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival, the AP.[1] The New York Times later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it.[1]
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 cited autobiography, he was obsessed with merging UP with the International News ServiceInternational News Service
International News Service was a U.S.-based news agency founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.Established two years after the Scripps family founded the United Press Association, INS scrapped among the newswires...
, a news agency that had been founded by William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
in 1909 following Scripps' lead.
Bartholomew succeeded in putting the “I” in UPI in the spring of 1958, when UP and INS merged to become United Press International.
The new UPI now had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, about a thousand of them newspapers.
The merger was aimed at creating a stronger competitor for the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
and a stronger economic entity than either UP or INS. The newly formed United Press International (UPI) had 950 client newspapers. Fearing possible anti-trust issues with the Eisenhower Administration Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
, Scripps and Hearst rushed the merger through with unusual speed and in unusual secrecy.
All UP employees were retained, but most INS employees lost their jobs
with practically no warning, although some joined the new UPI and the columns of popular INS writers, such as Bob Considine
Bob Considine
Robert "Bob" Bernard Considine was an American writer and commentator. He is best-known for co-writing Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and The Babe Ruth Story.-Biography:...
, Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons was the first American news-writer movie columnist in the United States. She was a gossip columnist who, for many years, was an influential arbiter of Hollywood mores, often feared and hated by the individuals, mostly actors, whose careers she could negatively impact via her...
and Ruth Montgomery
Ruth Montgomery
Ruth Shick Montgomery was a self-described Christian psychic in the tradition of Jeane Dixon and Edgar Cayce. She was a biographer of Dixon and a protégée of Arthur Ford who claimed he could access the Akashic Records of the Universe.Montgomery initially believed her mission on Earth was to...
, were carried by UPI.
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. In 1959, UPI had 6,208 clients in 92 countries and territories, 234 news and picture bureaus, and an annual payroll of $34,000,000, ($) in today's dollars.
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
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
and Scripps controlled several other newspaper syndicates, due to possible anti-trust issues, the two companies 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
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
and other popular comic strips and columns.
UPI had an advantage of independence over the AP in reporting on the Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
of the 1950s and 1960s. Because the AP was a cooperative essentially owned by the newspapers, those in the South
The South
-Geography:* Southern United States* South of England* South of France* South Italy* South Korea* Republic of Ireland* South Province * Global South, the developing nations of the world-Other uses:* The South , by Victor Erice...
influenced its coverage of the racial unrest and protests, often ignoring, minimizing, or slanting the reporting. 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.
White House reporter Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist. She worked for the United Press and post-1958 successor United Press International for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau manager...
became the public face of UPI, as she was seen at televised press conferences beginning in the early 1960s. UPI famously scooped the AP in reporting the assassination of US President John Kennedy
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
on Friday, November 22, 1963. 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. Smith and UPI won a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for this reporting.
UP / UPI Newspictures, Newsfilm and Audio/Radio Network
United Press had no direct wirephotoWirephoto
Wirephoto or telephotography is the sending of pictures by telegraph or telephone.Western Union transmitted its first halftone photograph in 1921. AT&T followed in 1924, and RCA sent a Radiophoto in 1926. The Associated Press began its Wirephoto service in 1935, and held a trademark on the term AP...
service until 1952, when it absorbed co-owned Acme Newsphotos, under pressure from parent company Scripps to better compete with AP's news and photo services.
By that time, UP was also deeply involved with the newer visual medium of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. In 1948, it entered into a partnership with 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
subsidiary Fox Movietone News
Movietone News
Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States, and from 1929 to 1979 in the United Kingdom.-History:It is known in the U.S. as Fox Movietone News, produced cinema, sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963 in the U.S., from 1929 to 1979 in the UK , and from 1929 to 1975 in...
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
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
. In subsequent decades, it underwent several changes in partnerships and names, becoming best-known as United Press International Television News
United Press International Television News
Successor to earlier UPI television news film operations, United Press International Television News, abbreviated as UPITN, was a television news agency, operating from 1967 to 1985. United Press International Television News and Visnews were the two largest and most important television news...
or UPITN. Senior UPITN executives later helped Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
create CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, with its first two presidents, Reese Schonfeld
Reese Schonfeld
Maurice "Reese" Schonfeld is an American television journalist who was co-founder of CNN and the Food Network.Schonfeld grew up in Newark, New Jersey, graduated from Dartmouth College and received an M.A. and a law degree from Columbia University....
and Burt Reinhardt
Burt Reinhardt
Burton "Burt" Reinhardt was an American journalist and news executive, who served as executive Vice President of CNN from 1980 to 1982 and the second President of CNN from 1982 to 1990...
, coming from UPITN ranks.
The UPI Audio actuality service for radio stations, created in 1958 and later renamed the United Press International Radio Network
United Press International Radio Network
Originally named "UPI Audio," the United Press International Radio Network was an audio actuality news service for radio and television stations from then-major wire service United Press International....
, 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
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
.
Decline
UPI came close to equaling the size of the AP in the early 1960s, but as newspaper revenue began to dwindle, it was dropped by papers that could no longer afford to subscribe to both UPI and the AP. 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. By the early 1980s, the number of staffers was down to 1,800 and there were just 100 news bureaus.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 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
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, which wanted to increase its US presence. As detailed in "Down to the Wire", by Gordon and Cohen, cited below, 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 and William Geissler, originally associated with two better-known partners, who soon departed. Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for the nominal price of $1 and were given a Scripps loan of $5 million, which was never repaid. 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 additional major 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
United Press International Radio Network
Originally named "UPI Audio," the United Press International Radio Network was an audio actuality news service for radio and television stations from then-major wire service United Press International....
. 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. It also sold UPI'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
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
's separate Corbis Corporation, which continues to control the images of UPI and its predecessor agencies, 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.
UPI's remaining minority stake in United Press International Television News
United Press International Television News
Successor to earlier UPI television news film operations, United Press International Television News, abbreviated as UPITN, was a television news agency, operating from 1967 to 1985. United Press International Television News and Visnews were the two largest and most important television news...
(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
Associated Press Television News
Associated Press Television News, abbreviated as either AP Television News or APTN, is a global video news agency.-About:AP Television News is the video division of the Associated Press. It provides many of the world's broadcasters with a round-the-clock continuous feed of news, sports,...
, which entered the video news field long after UPI left it.
Years of mismanagement, missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed. By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two Chapter 11 bankruptcies
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. Mario Vázquez Raña
Mario Vazquez Raña
Mario Vázquez Raña is a Mexican businessman and sports administrator, who has served on both national and Olympic committees...
, 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.
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
Financial News Network
The Financial News Network was a television network that operated throughout the United States during the 1980s.-Founding:Financial News Network was founded in 1981 by two men: Rodney Buchser, who had been general manager of KWHY, Channel 22 in Los Angeles and Glenn Taylor. The concept originated...
, both headed by Earl Brian
Earl Brian
Dr. Earl Winfrey Brian, Jr. was a decorated combat surgeon with an aerial support unit for the United States Central Intelligence Agency's Vietnam War-era Phoenix Program...
, who also became UPI chairman. In early 1991, Infotechnology 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. Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able. In 1992, a group of Saudi
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million.
By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices. Although the Saudi-based investors had poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit. The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to websites such as Excite and Yahoo. At that point, the CEO embarked on "an ambitious agenda" to turn UPI into an Internet media service that delivered the news in a dramatic and colorful manner. That year, UPI launched its first version of a direct-to-consumer website. UPI executives told Forbes that they also hoped to develop and provide subscription Internet news packages that were narrowly tailored for corporate and special-interest clients. In August 1999, UPI closed its radio network and broadcast wire operations, selling the remaining customer contracts to its longtime arch rival, AP. With that, UPI effectively left the traditional wire service field.
Current ownership
Unification Church
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea, as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity . In 1994, Moon gave the church...
's media corporation, News World Communications
News World Communications
News World Communications, Inc., is an international news media corporation. It was founded in New York City, in 1976, by Unification Church founder and leader, Sun Myung Moon. Its first two newspapers, The News World and the Spanish-language Noticias del Mundo, were published in New York from...
, which, at the time, also owned the Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The next day, UPI's White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
correspondent, Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist. She worked for the United Press and post-1958 successor United Press International for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau manager...
, resigned her position, after working for UPI 57 years.
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 has a reporter in the White House press corps
White House Press Corps
The White House Press Corps is the group of journalists or correspondents usually stationed at the White House in Washington, D.C. to cover the president of the United States, White House events and news briefings. Their offices are located in the West Wing....
or a bureau covering the United Nations. 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. In 2008, UPI began UPIU, a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools, that allows recent college graduates to post their work on the site, but does not pay for stories.
As of March 2011, the UPI.com website reports that the organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with other addresses in Seoul, South Korea; Beirut, Lebanon; Tokyo, Japan; Santiago, Chile; and Hong Kong, China.
Notable alumni
While much of normal news agency work is little publicized, many UP/UPI news staffers did gain fame, either while with the agency or in later careers. They included journalists, news executives, novelists and high government officials. Among them were Walter CronkiteWalter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
, David Brinkley
David Brinkley
David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997....
, Eric Sevareid
Eric Sevareid
Arnold Eric Sevareid was a CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents—dubbed "Murrow's Boys"—because they were hired by pioneering CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow....
, Harrison Salisbury
Harrison Salisbury
Harrison Evans Salisbury , an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist , was the first regular New York Times correspondent in Moscow after World War II. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota...
, Richard C. Hottelet
Richard C. Hottelet
Richard C. Hottelet was a Brooklyn-born American broadcast journalist for the latter half of the twentieth century. He continues to write and lecture....
, Howard K. Smith
Howard K. Smith
Howard Kingsbury Smith was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original Edward R. Murrow boys.-Early life:...
, Edwin Newman
Edwin Newman
Edwin Harold Newman was an American newscaster, journalist and author.-Early life and education:Newman was born on January 25, 1919 in New York City to Myron and Rose Newman. His older brother was M. W. Newman, a longtime reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Newman married Rigel Grell on August...
, the founding director of CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
, Paul White
Paul White (journalist)
Paul Welrose White from Pittsburg, Kansas worked as director of news at CBS beginning in 1930. He was CBS' first news director. White worked as a newspaper journalist prior to beginning his radio broadcasting career with CBS...
, for whom the top award given by the broadcast news directors organization Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) is named, early ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
president Elmer Lower
Elmer Lower
Elmer Wilson Lower was an American journalist and president of ABC News from 1963 to 1974.Lower received his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1933...
, Merriman Smith, Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist. She worked for the United Press and post-1958 successor United Press International for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau manager...
, Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...
, Neil Sheehan
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series in the Times revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and resulted in government...
, Thomas Friedman
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Lauren Friedman is an American journalist, columnist and author. He writes a twice-weekly column for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs including global trade, the Middle East, and environmental issues and has won the Pulitzer Prize three times.-Personal...
, Brit Hume
Brit Hume
Brit Hume is an American television journalist and political commentator.For twenty years he was a correspondent for the American Broadcasting Company, including Chief White House Correspondent. He then spent ten years as the Washington, D.C. managing editor of the Fox News Channel and the anchor...
, Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann
Keith Theodore Olbermann is an American political commentator and writer. He has been the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of Current TV's weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, since June 20, 2011...
, sportswriter and Untouchables
The Untouchables (1957 book)
The Untouchables is an autobiographical memoir by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, published in 1957. The book deals with the experiences of Eliot Ness, a federal agent in the Bureau of Prohibition, as he fights crime in Chicago in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the help of a special team of...
co-author Oscar Fraley
Oscar Fraley
Oscar Fraley was the co-author, with Eliot Ness, of the famous American memoir The Untouchables. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fraley grew up across the Delaware River in Woodbury, New Jersey....
, military author Joe Galloway, Saigon evacuation photographer Hubert van Es
Hubert van Es
Hubert van Es was a Dutch photographer and photojournalist who took the well-known photo on 29 April 1975, which shows South Vietnamese civilians scrambling to board a CIA Air America helicopter during the U.S. evacuation of Saigon...
, 1970's White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
photographer David Hume Kennerly
David Hume Kennerly
David Hume Kennerly in Roseburg, Oregon, won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden, March 8, 1971...
, White House spokesmen George Reedy
George Reedy
George Edward Reedy was White House Press Secretary from 1964 to 1965. Reedy served under President Lyndon B. Johnson.-Biography:...
, Ron Nessen
Ron Nessen
Ronald Harold Nessen was White House Press Secretary for President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977. He replaced Jerald terHorst, who resigned in the wake of President Ford's pardon of former president Richard Nixon....
and Larry Speakes
Larry Speakes
Larry M. Speakes is a former acting spokesman for the White House under President Ronald Reagan, having held the position from 1981 to 1987.Speakes was born in Cleveland, Mississippi...
, onetime CIA Director Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, who interviewed Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
for United Press during the 1936 Olympics, diplomat Edward M. Korry
Edward M. Korry
Edward Malcolm Korry was an American diplomat during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.Korry, a native of New York, was U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia and to Chile . Upon hearing the news that Salvador Allende had been elected president of Chile, he proclaimed that "not a...
, ex-Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton
Les Hinton
Leslie Frank "Les" Hinton is a British-American journalist and businessman. Hinton, born in the UK, became a United States citizen in 1986. He was appointed CEO of Dow Jones & Company in December 2007, after its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation...
and novelists Tony Hillerman
Tony Hillerman
Tony Hillerman was an award-winning American author of detective novels and non-fiction works best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels...
and Daniel Silva. Naked City photographer Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
and 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
creator and producer Don Hewitt
Don Hewitt
Donald Shepard "Don" Hewitt was an American television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes, the CBS television news magazine, in 1968, which at the time of his death, was the longest-running prime-time broadcast on American television...
worked for UP Newspictures predecessor Acme Newsphotos.
UPI reporters and photographers have won ten Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
s: Russell Jones (International Reporting, 1957), Andrew Lopez (News Photography, 1960), Yasushi Nagao
Yasushi Nagao
was a Pulitzer Prize-winning press photographer.Nagao took a photograph of Otoya Yamaguchi killing Inejiro Asanuma. At the time Nagao was a cameraman working for Mainichi Shimbun; Hisatake Abo, Nagao's picture editor, told Nagao to cover a debate at Hibiya Hall...
(News Photography, 1961), Merriman Smith (National Reporting, 1964), Kyoichi Sawada
Kyoichi Sawada
was a Japanese photographer with United Press International who received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his combat photography of the Vietnam War during 1965. Two of these photographs were selected as "World Press Photos of the Year" in 1965 and 1966. The 1965 photograph shows a...
(News Photography, 1966), Toshio Sakai
Toshio Sakai
, a graduate of Meiji University, a photographer for United Press International, won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1968, for a photograph depicting the Vietnam War. He was the first person to receive that award.- Notes :...
(Feature Photography, 1968), Lucinda Franks
Lucinda Franks
Lucinda Franks is a former staff writer for The New York Times, and she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic...
and Thomas Powers
Thomas Powers
Thomas Powers is an author, and an intelligence expert.He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 together with Lucinda Franks for his articles on Weatherman member Diana Oughton...
(National Reporting, 1971), and David Hume Kennerly
David Hume Kennerly
David Hume Kennerly in Roseburg, Oregon, won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden, March 8, 1971...
(Feature Photography, 1972). John H. Blair (spot news photography) a special assignment photographer for UPI, 1978; An originally unnamed UPI photographer whose identity was withheld because of risk in revolutionary Iran. (spot news photography), 1980. Decades later, the photographer of "Firing Squad in Iran" was identified as Jahangir Razmi
Jahangir Razmi
Jahangir Razmi is an award-winning Iranian photographer and the author of the entry that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. His photograph, Firing Squad in Iran, was taken on August 27, 1979 and published anonymously in the Iranian daily Ettela'at, the oldest still running...
of Ettela'at, Iran.
Key UP / UPI product and technical innovation dates
- In 1908, UP began offering feature stories and using reporter bylineBylineThe byline on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name, and often the position, of the writer of the article. Bylines are traditionally placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines place bylines at the bottom of the page, to leave more room for graphical...
s. - In 1915 UP begins to use teleprinterTeleprinterA teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
s, more recently known as Teletype machines. - In the 1930s and 1940s, UP Newspictures predecessor agency Acme developed the International Unifax machine, the first automatic picture receiver.
- The "Ocean Press", a news service for ocean linerOcean linerAn ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...
s, 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. - In 1935, UP was the first major news service to offer news to broadcastersBroadcastingBroadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
. - In 1945 UP offered the first all-sports wire.
- In 1948 UP started the first international television news film service. Originally named "UP Movietone", in view of a partnership with the Movietone NewsMovietone NewsMovietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States, and from 1929 to 1979 in the United Kingdom.-History:It is known in the U.S. as Fox Movietone News, produced cinema, sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963 in the U.S., from 1929 to 1979 in the UK , and from 1929 to 1975 in...
service of 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, it went through several partnerships and name changes and was known as United Press International Television NewsUnited Press International Television NewsSuccessor to earlier UPI television news film operations, United Press International Television News, abbreviated as UPITN, was a television news agency, operating from 1967 to 1985. United Press International Television News and Visnews were the two largest and most important 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. - In 1951 UP offered the first teletypesetter (TTS) service, enabling newspapers to automatically set and justify type from wire transmissions.
- 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 NetworkUnited Press International Radio NetworkOriginally named "UPI Audio," the United Press International Radio Network was an audio actuality news service for radio and television stations from then-major wire service United Press International....
in 1983. - In 1974, UPI launched the first "high-speed" data newswire—operating at 1,200 WPM.
- In 1979, UPI along with Telecomputing Corp. of America began making the UPI world news report available to owners of home computers.
- In 1982, UPI pioneered a coding system allowing clients to choose stories based on topic, subtopic and location.
External links
Current- United Press International official Web site
- United Press International official Spanish-language Web site
- 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
- Downhold Wire Googlegroups UPI Alum Listserve
- The Downhold Project—collaborative UPI history project site
- Dead Microphone Club—UPI Radio Network Alum site