United Press International

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United Press International , or UPI for short, is a news agency in the USA . It emerged in 1958 from United Press (UP) and International News Service (INS).

UP was founded in 1907 by Edward W. Scripps , INS two years later by newspaper tycoon William R. Hearst . While the Associated Press (AP) was owned by numerous newspapers as part of a cooperative construction and only supplied news to the shareholders, UPI saw itself as a challenger to a monopoly company.

Changes in the media landscape affected UPI; When the founding family Scripps sold UPI, the company got into economic turmoil, which led to two bankruptcies. Ultimately, in 2000, UPI became the property of the Conservative Unification Church through News World Communications . Since then, the news has only been distributed in abridged versions in English, Spanish and Arabic.

From 1946 to November 1978 UPI also operated a German-language news service; this was last based in Vienna. In Austria, the UPI was the only competitor to the monopoly Austria Presse Agentur (APA), a cooperative of Austrian daily newspapers (with the exception of the Kronenzeitung) and the ORF .

history

United Press Associations

The newspaper publisher EW Scripps (1854-1926) founded the United States' first newspaper chain. When AP refused to sell its services to Scripps Newspapers, Scripps and partner Milton A. McRae formed United Press Associations , a merger of three regional news agencies, the Publisher's Press Association , Scripps McRae Press Association and Scripps News Association . United Press Associations began reporting on June 21, 1907.

United Press was the only major privately owned news agency in the world. At the time, AP dominated the news industry in the United States; in Europe the agencies were under the control of their respective governments:

William R. Hearst first appeared in the agency business in 1909 when he founded International News Service .

It was the AP's business principle not to send messages to competitors of shareholders. However, Scripps refused to become a partner in the AP. He accused the AP of a “clear and unambiguous monopoly stance” and claimed that it was impossible “to start a new newspaper in those cities where AP shareholders already operate a newspaper”. In contrast, Scripps took the position that a news agency must be open to all media, including the competitors of shareholders.

UPI is founded

When UP and INS merged on May 24, 1958, the I from International News Service was appended to the UP from United Press in the company name. Hearst, owner of King Features Syndicate , took a small stake in the merged company. Lawyers on both sides feared antitrust problems in the event that Scripps-owned United Feature Syndicate , a competitor of King Features Syndicate, were involved in UPI. So the UPI had to be economically separated from the other companies of the Scripps empire. As a result, UPI could not use important marketing instruments and was not involved in important sources of income such as those from the Peanuts comics by Charles M. Schulz .

The new UPI had 6,000 employees and 5,000 customers, including 1,000 newspapers. In the same year the company founded the UPI Audio Network , the first service for radio stations. In 1960 UPI participated in a film news agency for television stations.

The 1990s

As a cooperative agency, AP was able to pass on the costs of extraordinary expenses to the carrier newspapers. This was important at major sporting events such as the Olympic Games , but also when reporting on armed conflicts. UPI customers, on the other hand, could calculate with a fixed fee. In addition, UPI's customers only paid about half of what AP customers had to pay for AP's services. For example, at one point the Chicago Sun-Times was paying the AP $ 12,500 a week, while the UPI was paying only $ 5,000; the Wall Street Journal paid the AP $ 36,000 a week, while the UPI was only paying $ 19,300.

In addition, UPI's economic situation was affected by new developments in the media sector. Many afternoon newspapers had to close, which reduced UPI's customer base. From 1992 to 2000, UPI changed hands six times. Eventually the company was bought by News World Communications . Because this company is owned by the Unification Church , the change in ownership sparked a discussion about editorial independence. Helen Thomas , the most famous UPI journalist in the United States, resigned from her post as UPI's Chief White House Correspondent after 57 years at UPI .

The recent past

With the entry of News World Communications, UPI found itself in calmer waters. In addition to reporting in English, Arabic reporting from the Middle East and Spanish reporting from Latin America have increasingly come into focus in recent years.

With Washington, DC as its headquarters, UPI is currently represented worldwide through offices in Beirut , Hong Kong , London , Santiago de Chile , Seoul and Tokyo . Outside of the offices, correspondents from all major capitals report on current events on site. The UPI correspondent in Berlin is Stefan Nicola. However, for the first time in her history, she has not accredited a reporter to the White House .

In addition, numerous columnists work for UPI whose articles deal with specific current political issues, e.g. B. Discuss security policy and forward them to international daily newspapers or agencies. Currently known UPI columnists are:

Former employees of UPI

United Press editor Lucien Carr once said:

"It was UPI's great virtue that we felt like David who can grind the Goliath AP."

UPI journalists were nicknamed "Unipresser". Famous University pressers were Walter Cronkite , David Brinkley , Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, Helen Thomas, Pye Chamberlayne, Frank Bartholomew, Hugh Baillie, Vernon Scott, Chauncey Bailey, Robert H Tanji (a journalist in Tokyo who was murdered while practicing his profession ), William L. Shirer (best known for his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ), Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Myram Borders (he was office manager in Las Vegas for 25 years and initially reported exclusively on the wedding between Elvis Presley and Priscilla ).

Numerous UPI photographers have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize , including Andrew Lopez (1960), Kyoichi Sawada (1966), Toshio Sakai (1968) and David Hume Kennerly (1972).

Among the numerous books on UPI are: Gregory Gordon and Ronald E. Cohen's: "Down To The Wire (1990)"; Richard M. Hartnett and Billy G. Ferguson: "Unipress" (2003) and Gary Haynes: "Picture This: The Inside Story of UPI Newspictures" (2006) with a foreword by the former Unipressor Walter Cronkite.

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