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UPDATE 3-Company linked to Unification Church acquires UPI
Updated 11:31 PM ET May 15, 2000
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The owner of the Washington Times newspaper, a company linked to the Unification Church, has acquired the United Press International wire service, which broke the news of President Kennedy's assassination but has since fallen on hard times, the agency said Monday.
UPI said in an article Monday that News World Communications, established by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, "plans to maintain UPI as an independent news-gathering operation while upgrading its capacity with new technologies and distribution practices."
Since it was established by Moon in 1982, The Washington Times has provided a consistently conservative editorial voice in the nation's capital. Moon also lists on his Internet site newspapers in Seoul, Tokyo, Montevideo, Athens, Los Angeles and New York.
Terms of the sale, which includes such assets of UPI as its corporate name and trademark, were not disclosed.
A later article by UPI quoted its Chief Executive Officer Arnaud de Borchgrave as telling staff members that the agency's editorial independence would continue.
UPI said staff members had asked him if the agency was making money, to which he replied: "Not yet, but we'll get there." He said UPI had 157 employees in the United States, Britain, Latin America and Asia.
De Borchgrave, who served as editor in chief of The Washington Times from 1985 to 1991, said that while some top officials of News World were members of the Unification Church, there was no formal affiliation between the church and the company.
AT PEAK IN LATE 1950S
UPI reached its peak in the late 1950s, when it had some 5,000 newspaper and broadcast clients. Over the next several decades, its client base shrank. UPI recently sold its once-powerful broadcast division to its longtime rival, the Associated Press.
In recent years UPI has been most famous for its chief White House reporter, Helen Thomas, the dean of presidential journalists, who has covered every president since Kennedy.
"Unipressers" in their heyday had some of the best-known bylines in American journalism. The wire service's alumni included Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid and Harrison Salisbury.
UPI scored numerous coups in journalism, perhaps most notably its beat over AP on the assassination of Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
Veteran UPI White House correspondent Merriman Smith seized the only phone in the press car in the presidential motorcade and refused to relinquish it to his AP counterpart, Jack Bell.
The world's first word of the assassination came from Smith, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
But there were gaffes as well, such as an April 28, 1986, report that 2,000 people had been killed in the Chernobyl nuclear accident and a "scoop" on the signing of the armistice ending the First World War that moved four days before the Nov. 11, 1918, event.
AGENCY WAS FOUNDED IN 1907
United Press was launched June 21, 1907, by newspaper magnate Edward Wyllis Scripps in part because he wanted a news agency to supply stories to his afternoon dailies, which the morning-paper-oriented AP would not serve.
Thus began a long competitive rivalry with the larger, richer AP that often was one of the most intense in American journalism.
In May 1958, United Press merged with the third major U.S. wire service, William Randolph Hearst's International News Service. Now known as United Press International and armed with many of of INS' well-known correspondents around the world, the agency set out to challenge the AP.
But it started losing money within four years and never stopped. Battered by the rise of television news and the shrinking number of afternoon newspapers -- the backbone of its news report -- UPI shrank in size and income.
There were still some days of glory. UPI won six more Pulitzer Prizes in reporting and photography besides Smith's and called Jimmy Carter's election as president in 1976 before any other news organization.
After trying for years to unload UPI to a major news organization, UPI's owner, the Scripps Howard newspaper chain paid two inexperienced Nashville, Tennessee, entrepreneurs, Doug Ruhe and Bill Geisler, $5 million to take it in 1982.
The two presided over a news agency that hemorrhaged money, lost clients and sold off assets -- including its overseas news pictures operation to Reuters -- and eventually had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Over the next decade, UPI changed hands three times. First it was sold to Mexican publisher Mario Vazquez-Rana, then to California venture capitalist Earl Brian.
A group of Saudi Arabian businessmen have owned UPI since it was bought out of bankruptcy for $3.95 million in 1992.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
I voted for the Neal Knox 13
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!
UPDATE 3-Company linked to Unification Church acquires UPI
Updated 11:31 PM ET May 15, 2000
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The owner of the Washington Times newspaper, a company linked to the Unification Church, has acquired the United Press International wire service, which broke the news of President Kennedy's assassination but has since fallen on hard times, the agency said Monday.
UPI said in an article Monday that News World Communications, established by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, "plans to maintain UPI as an independent news-gathering operation while upgrading its capacity with new technologies and distribution practices."
Since it was established by Moon in 1982, The Washington Times has provided a consistently conservative editorial voice in the nation's capital. Moon also lists on his Internet site newspapers in Seoul, Tokyo, Montevideo, Athens, Los Angeles and New York.
Terms of the sale, which includes such assets of UPI as its corporate name and trademark, were not disclosed.
A later article by UPI quoted its Chief Executive Officer Arnaud de Borchgrave as telling staff members that the agency's editorial independence would continue.
UPI said staff members had asked him if the agency was making money, to which he replied: "Not yet, but we'll get there." He said UPI had 157 employees in the United States, Britain, Latin America and Asia.
De Borchgrave, who served as editor in chief of The Washington Times from 1985 to 1991, said that while some top officials of News World were members of the Unification Church, there was no formal affiliation between the church and the company.
AT PEAK IN LATE 1950S
UPI reached its peak in the late 1950s, when it had some 5,000 newspaper and broadcast clients. Over the next several decades, its client base shrank. UPI recently sold its once-powerful broadcast division to its longtime rival, the Associated Press.
In recent years UPI has been most famous for its chief White House reporter, Helen Thomas, the dean of presidential journalists, who has covered every president since Kennedy.
"Unipressers" in their heyday had some of the best-known bylines in American journalism. The wire service's alumni included Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid and Harrison Salisbury.
UPI scored numerous coups in journalism, perhaps most notably its beat over AP on the assassination of Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
Veteran UPI White House correspondent Merriman Smith seized the only phone in the press car in the presidential motorcade and refused to relinquish it to his AP counterpart, Jack Bell.
The world's first word of the assassination came from Smith, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
But there were gaffes as well, such as an April 28, 1986, report that 2,000 people had been killed in the Chernobyl nuclear accident and a "scoop" on the signing of the armistice ending the First World War that moved four days before the Nov. 11, 1918, event.
AGENCY WAS FOUNDED IN 1907
United Press was launched June 21, 1907, by newspaper magnate Edward Wyllis Scripps in part because he wanted a news agency to supply stories to his afternoon dailies, which the morning-paper-oriented AP would not serve.
Thus began a long competitive rivalry with the larger, richer AP that often was one of the most intense in American journalism.
In May 1958, United Press merged with the third major U.S. wire service, William Randolph Hearst's International News Service. Now known as United Press International and armed with many of of INS' well-known correspondents around the world, the agency set out to challenge the AP.
But it started losing money within four years and never stopped. Battered by the rise of television news and the shrinking number of afternoon newspapers -- the backbone of its news report -- UPI shrank in size and income.
There were still some days of glory. UPI won six more Pulitzer Prizes in reporting and photography besides Smith's and called Jimmy Carter's election as president in 1976 before any other news organization.
After trying for years to unload UPI to a major news organization, UPI's owner, the Scripps Howard newspaper chain paid two inexperienced Nashville, Tennessee, entrepreneurs, Doug Ruhe and Bill Geisler, $5 million to take it in 1982.
The two presided over a news agency that hemorrhaged money, lost clients and sold off assets -- including its overseas news pictures operation to Reuters -- and eventually had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Over the next decade, UPI changed hands three times. First it was sold to Mexican publisher Mario Vazquez-Rana, then to California venture capitalist Earl Brian.
A group of Saudi Arabian businessmen have owned UPI since it was bought out of bankruptcy for $3.95 million in 1992.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
I voted for the Neal Knox 13
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!
