Formally named
United Press Associations for incorporation and legal purposes but publicly known and identified as
United Press or
UP, the news agency was created by the 1907 uniting of three smaller news syndicates by the Midwest newspaper publisher
E. W. Scripps. In 1958, it became
United Press International after absorbing the
International News Service (INS) As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing domestically for about 90 years with the
Associated Press (AP) and internationally with AP,
Reuters and
Agence France-Presse (AFP). At its peak, UPI had more than 2,000 full-time employees and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries; it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. With the rising popularity of television news, the business of UPI began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company. With each change in ownership came deeper service and staff cutbacks and changes of focus and a corresponding shrinkage of its traditional media customer base. Since the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its one-time major rival, the AP, UPI has concentrated on smaller information market niches. It no longer services media organizations in a major way. BUP correspondents included future anchors
Knowlton Nash and
Walter Cronkite. In 1936, BUP launched Canada's first coast-to-coast radio newswire service providing news copy to private radio stations across the country. In 1940, the Canadian government suspended the broadcast licenses of BUP and
Transradio Press Service both of whom, unlike
Canadian Press, sold commercial sponsorships for its news bulletins in violation of government policy. Transport minister
C.D. Howe, who was responsible for broadcasting policy, announced that the two wire services must "show their news source is accurate" in order to retain their licenses. After complaints by Transradio that the move was an attempt by "selfish publishing and monopolistic interests … to destroy independent news services throughout the Dominion", the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which at the time was also responsible for regulating private radio broadcasters, agreed to reinstate Transradio's and BUP's licenses while also announcing a plan to enforce the ban on commercial news broadcasts by editing dispatches by the wire services before they were distributed to radio stations. In 1958, when United Press merged with the International News Service to become UPI, British United Press was renamed United Press International of Canada. In 1979, 80% of UPI Canada was sold to the
Toronto Sun newspaper chain and renamed
United Press Canada. In 1985, UPC was sold to
Canadian Press, which absorbed it.
United Press Associations , Beginning with the
Cleveland Press, publisher
E. W. Scripps (1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. Because the then-recently reorganized
Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers, most of them evening dailies in competition with existing AP franchise holders, in 1907 Scripps merged three smaller syndicates under his ownership or control, the Publishers Press Association, the Scripps-McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association, to form United Press Associations, with headquarters in New York City. In 2016, Corbis was sold to the Visual China Group. UPI's remaining minority stake in UPITN was also sold and the agency was renamed Worldwide Television News (WTN). As with its photographs, UPI thereby lost all control of its newsfilm and video library, which is now held by WTN-successor
Associated Press Television News, which entered the video news field long after UPI left it. Years of mismanagement, missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed. By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two
Chapter 11 Mario Vázquez Raña, a Mexican media magnate, with a nominal American minority partner, Houston real estate developer Joseph Russo, purchased UPI out of bankruptcy for $40 million, losing millions during his short tenure, and firing numerous high-level staff. In 1988, Vázquez Raña sold UPI to Infotechnology, Inc., an information technology and venture capital company and parent company of cable TV's
Financial News Network, both headed by
Earl Brian, who also became UPI chairman. In early 1991, Infotechnology itself filed for bankruptcy, announced layoffs at UPI and sought to terminate certain employee benefits in an attempt to keep UPI afloat. At that point, UPI was down to 585 employees. Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy for the second time, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able. In 1992, a group of
Saudi investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million. By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices. Although the Saudi-based investors claimed to have poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit. The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to such websites as Excite and Yahoo. At that point, UPI CEO
Arnaud de Borchgrave orchestrated UPI's exit from its last major media niche, the broadcast news business that United Press had initiated in the 1930s. De Borchgrave maintained that "what was brilliant pioneering work on the part of UPI prior to World War II, with radio news, is now a static quantity and so far as I'm concerned, certainly doesn't fit into my plans for the future". He sought to shift UPI's dwindling resources into Internet-based delivery of newsletter services, focusing more on technical and diplomatic specialties than on general news. The rump UPI thus sold the client list of its still-significant radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival, the AP.
Current ownership UPI was purchased in May 2000 by
News World Communications, a media conglomerate founded by
Unification Church founder
Sun Myung Moon, which also owned
The Washington Times and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The next day, UPI's
White House correspondent,
Helen Thomas, resigned her position, after working for UPI for 57 years. In 2007, as part of a restructuring to keep UPI in business and profitable, management cut 11 staff from its Washington, D.C. office and no longer had a reporter in the
White House press corps or a bureau covering the United Nations. UPI spokespersons and press releases said the company would be focusing instead on expanding operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, and reporting on security threats, intelligence and energy issues. In 2008, UPI began UPIU, a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools, that allowed recent college graduates to post their work on the site but did not pay for stories. ==UPI sports awards==