Word: upi
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...late swing, the march of history is not poignant--it is a hard blow to the gut. He speaks of the former owners of United Press International, scoundrels whose skullduggery contributed to the proud organization's demise. A sadistic smile creeps across the man's face as he pictures UPI's former owners clutching steel bars. With good reason, of course; after all, he was one of nearly a thousand spun off into reporting oblivion as the company fell into its death spiral...
...Class of 1886, the wire service grew to be the second largest in the world, neck-and-neck with the ubiquitous Associated Press. Its correspondents--Walter Cronkite in Brussels, for example--reported for American newspapers from bureaus around the world. When bullets rang out on the streets of Dallas, UPI was the first to report that John F. Kennedy '40 had been shot--one reporter from UPI and one from AP had been riding in the car following Kennedy's and UPI managed to hang on to the car's only telephone, even as the AP reporter wrestled...
...UPI ain't it, though. Not anymore. It's a funny thing--from Lafayette Park, one need only walk about 50 feet to find a concrete building with a brass lintel reading UPI as clearly as the label on the Teletype machine. The building is almost as useless. Once employing more than a thousand reporters around the globe, today UPI's staff is scarcely more than 100. UPI staple Helen Thomas, the senior White House correspondent, nearly 80 years old herself, gets up to be at the White House at 5:30 in the morning, to write stories...
...UPI wire is still hot--every thirty seconds or so another story runs. Only they're not real stories. At best, UPI's famous network of international correspondents has been replaced by stringers and freelancers who are able to pick up some of the slack. But that's about it. The stories average about two sentences. Unable to pretend to be a full-fledged wire service, the agency is moving to provide what might be called news fragments. A more apt name might be in order: blurb, maybe. Or blip. UPI now supplies headlines to a San Francisco paging company...
...when Scripps sold UPI after 75 years, its president promised UPI faithful that the reporting stalwart would not be abandoned. The Scripps family said especially that selling to foreign owners would be a last resort, since UPI is an American news company. Reuters and Agence France Presse might sneak across the borders, but the Scrippses felt offshore ownership would compromised the company's excellence. Today a Saudi group, including the brother-in-law of King Fahd owns UPI. But how can anyone complain? It beats the embezzlers whose hard time still makes the old Brit grin...