From TheBestLinks.com
United Press International (UPI) is a global news agency headquartered in the United States filing news in English, Spanish and Arabic. Once one of the three biggest news agencies in the world, with Associated Press and Reuters, it has dwindled in size and continues to redefine itself.
Newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps combined three regional news services into the United Press Associations, which began 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.
People of UPI
News people who work for UPI are nicknamed "Unipressers." Famous Unipressers from UPI's include 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. Helen Thomas retired after 57 years as UPI's Chief White House Correspondent was known as the "Dean of the White House Press Corps". 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.
Arnaud De Borchgrave, Newsweek's chief foreign correspondent for 25 years, covering more than 90 countries and 17 wars, is currently UPI Editor-at-Large.
Technical milestones
In 1908 UP pioneered the transmission of feature stories and use of reporter bylines. In 1914 Edward Kleinschmidt invented the teletype, which replaced 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 was the first major news service to offer news to broadcasters. 1945 saw it launch the first all-sports wire. In 1951 United Press offered the first teletypesetter (TTS) service, enabling newspapers to automatically set and justify type from wire transmissions. In 1952 United Press launcheed the first international television news film service.
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