Word: upi
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...after what they describe as "a year, or two, of drinking dangerously" the couple have completed a safari into winelands throughout the African continent. The result is Africa Uncorked (Double Storey Books; 288 pages), the Platters' book on "travels in extreme wine territory." A former foreign correspondent and UPI bureau chief in Africa, John Platter dropped out of journalism to buy a farm in the South African Cape, then began making his own wine and writing about it. "I was lucky. I just found I had a nose for it," he says. His safari with Erica, also an ex-journalist...
...happened slowly but very surely. By 1980, UPI had been losing money for 25 straight years, and Scripps had had enough. The company went up for sale and, while on the market, lost its contract with the New York Daily News, which may well have been its lifeblood. UPI's contract with the also-struggling tabloid was good for $55,000 per month. In desperate denial, UPI offered to let the Daily News hang on to its service for free for months, hoping to win back the contract. Enter the Tennesseans...
Exit the Tennesseans. Soon came the embezzlers, and in 1991, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy protection. Four years later, UPI bigwigs received federal fraud and conspiracy indictments, accused of falsifying books and lease transactions. Soon the Saudi's plunked down $3.6 million and made the UPI headache their own. And along the way, the Teletype machines, the excitement, the reporters, and the copy were discarded in what seems like a vain effort to hold together the crumbling shells of an empty...
There is no lesson to learn from this story. Epic as it may be, at least for nostalgic reporters, it is largely a case of mismanagement. Changing taste for news can hardly be blamed, since the company had been hemorrhaging millions for decades. At most, the demise of UPI should simply remind us of the inevitable disintegration of all things...
...UPI as a human chapter in the telling of the human story is probably best. To remember the pinnacle of reporting--writing down words to describe the actions of men and women and the lives they live--is to tip one's hat to the pinnacle of civilization and politics in the twentieth century. And to discover the real life, or at least a single beat in the rhythmic pulse, of Washington...