United Press
United Press International (UPI) is a global news agency based in the U.S. filing news in English, Spanish and Arabic. Once one of the three biggest news agencies in the world, with Associated Press and Reuters, it dwindled in size and continues to redefine itself.
Newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps combines three regional news services into the United Press Associations, which begins service on July 15, 1907. Scripps founded United Press on the principle that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a news service. This formula made UP a direct threat to the monopolistic and exclusionary alliances of the major U.S. and European wire services at the time.
UP's announcement on July 15 said: "It is announced that the United Press will not be run on narrow or monopolistic lines, but will seek to give fair and impartial service to all legitimate newspaper publishers in the field." Scripps later said: "I regard my life's greatest service to the people of this country to be the creation of the United Press," because the competition provided by UP prevented the Associated Press from having a monopoly in determining what news was provided to the public.
On May 24, 1958, United Press merged with International News Service, which had been formed in 1909 by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, to become United Press International. UPI, in later 1958, launches the UPI Audio Network, the first wire service radio network.
UPI has a remarkable history of technical innovation and journalist milestones. In 1908 UP pioneered the transmission of feature stories and use of reporter bylines. In 1914 Edward Kleinschmidt invents the teletype, which replaces Morse code clickers in delivering news to newspapers. Press critic Oswald Garrison Villard credits United Press with first use of the teletype. In 1935 UP is first major news service to offer news to broadcasters. 1945 saw UP launching the first all-sports wire. In 1951 United Press offers the first teletypesetter (TTS) service, enabling newspapers to automatically set and justify type from wire transmissions. In 1952 United Press launches the first international television news film service.
Quickly adapting to technological innovation, UPI, on April 19, 1979 announced an agreement with Telecomputing Corp. of America to make the UPI world news report available to owners of home computers. Later UPI was the first news service to provide news to dial-up services such as Prodigy and world-wide web search pioneers Yahoo! and Excite!
In 1982 UPI pioneers an eight-level Custom Coding system that allows clients to choose stories based on topic, subtopic and location. Developing one of the first news taxonomies, UPI use of meta-data helped define how information was categorized and customized to the user.
UPI was hurt by changes in the modern news business, including the closing of many of America's afternoon newspapers, and was unprofitable for years. It went through seven owners between 1992 and 2000, when it was acquired by News World Communications, owner of the Washington Times. UPI's chief correspondent and most famous reporter, Helen Thomas, promptly resigned, complaining about the Times having links to the Unification Church.
News people who work for UPI are nicknamed "Unipressers." Famous Unipressers from UPI's glory days include broadcast journalists Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, and William L. Shirer, who is best remembered today for writing Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. UPI's famed Merriman Smith reported first-hand the deaths of two presidents, being in Warm Springs, Georgia when Franklin Roosevelt suffered his fatal stroke, and in Dallas, Texas with John F. Kennedy's motorcade when he was shot.
