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United Press International ('''UPI''') is a , 2007. It is now owned by Its news stories are filed in English , Spanish and Arabic . HISTORY United Press Associations Newspaper Publisher E.W. Scripps , ( 1854 - 1926 ), created the first chain of Newspaper s in the United States . After the Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers, Scripps together with partner Milton A. McRae combined three regional news services (the Publisher's Press Association, Scripps McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association) into the ''United Press Associations'', which began service on June 21 , 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 Service s of the time. United Press became the only privately-owned major news service in the world at a time the world news scene was dominated by the Associated Press in the United States and by the news agencies abroad, which were controlled directly or indirectly by their respective governments: Reuters in Britain , Havas in France , and Wolff in Germany . William Randolph Hearst entered the fray in 1909 when he founded International News Service. The AP was owned by its newspaper members, who could simply decline to serve the competition. Scripps had refused to become a member of AP, calling it a " Monopoly , pure and simple" and declaring it was "impossible for any new paper to be started in any of the cities where there were AP members." (AP appeared in 1848 , when six New York City newspapers formed a cooperative to gather and share Telegraph news, but the name ''Associated Press'' did not come into general use until the 1860s .) Scripps believed that there should be no restrictions on who could buy news from a news service and he made UP available to anyone, including his competitors. He later said: "I regard my life's greatest service to the people of this country to be the creation of the United Press." Creating UPI Frank Bartholomew , UPI's last Reporter -president, took over in 1955, obsessed with bringing Hearst's International News Service (INS) into UP. He put the "I" in UPI on May 24 , 1958 , when UP and INS merged to become ''United Press International''. Hearst, who owned King Features Syndicate , received a small share of the merged company. Lawyers on both sides worried about Anti-trust problems if King competitor, United Features Syndicate , remained a part of the newly merged company, so it was made a separate Scripps company, which deprived UPI of a persuasive sales tool and the money generated by Charles M. Schulz ' popular '' Peanuts '' and other Comic Strip s. The new UPI now had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, 1,000 of them newspapers. Later that year, it launched the UPI Audio Network, the first wire service radio network. In 1960, subsidiaries included UFS, United Press Movietone , a Television film service, was operated jointly with 20th Century Fox , the British United Press and Ocean Press . Decline AP was a publishers' cooperative and could assess its members to help pay for extraordinary coverage of such events as wars, the paid AP $12,500 a week, but UPI only $5,000; the Wall Street Journal paid AP $36,000 a week, but UPI only $19,300. UPI was hurt by changes in the modern news business, including the closing of many of America's afternoon newspapers, resulting in its customer base shrinking. It went through seven owners between 1992 and 2000, when it was acquired by News World Communications , owner of the '' Washington Times ''. Because News World Communications is owned by the Unification Church , this purchase raised concerns about Editorial Independence . Most notably these concerns were raised by UPI's best-known reporter, Helen Thomas , who resigned her position as UPI's chief White House correspondent after 57 years. Martin Walker, editor of UPI's English edition — a winner of Britain's 'Reporter of the Year' award when he was Deputy Editor-in-Chief at '' The Guardian '' — has said he has experienced "no editorial pressure from the owners." Recent years UPI's end as a viable news service began in 1999, when its remaining contracts were sold to longtime rival Associated Press. With investment from News World in its Arabic- and Spanish-language services, UPI has stayed in business. In 2004, UPI won the Clapper Award from the Senate Press Gallery and the Fourth Estate Award for its investigative reporting on the dilapidated hospitals awaiting wounded U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq . By 2007, UPI had fewer than 50 employees. In August 2007, the company slashed that number still further, and currently has only five reporters, all based in Washington. UPI now concentrates on producing 100-word news summaries rather than producing its own stories. PEOPLE OF UPI United Press editor Lucien Carr , whose roommate Jack Kerouac wrote '' On The Road '' on a continuous roll of UP Teletype paper, once said: "UP's great virtue was that we were the little guy {Link without Title} could screw the AP." News people who worked for UPI are nicknamed "Unipressers". Famous Unipressers from UPI's past include journalists Walter Cronkite , David Brinkley , Howard K. Smith , Eric Sevareid , Helen Thomas , Pye Chamberlayne , Frank Bartholomew , Hugh Baillie , Vernon Scott , Chauncey Bailey (journalist/editor murdered on the job), William L. Shirer (who is best remembered today for writing '' The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich '') and '' The New York Times 's''' Thomas Friedman . UPI , Darryl Heikes , Carlos Shiebeck , David Hume Kennerly , Ernie Schwork , Ron Bennett , James Atherton, James Smestad and Bill Snead . 's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of John F. Kennedy's Assassination . "Smith was in the press car...When he heard shots, he called in to the Dallas office and sent a flash bulletin," Harnett says. "The AP reporter started pounding on his shoulder to get to the phone, but Merriman kept it from him." (Quoted - Brill's Content, April 2001 ) 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. He began his journalistic career at UPI in 1946 . U.S. employees of UPI are represented by the News Media Guild . MILESTONES
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