(Sunday, May 21, 2000)
THE UPI ARMY - AN ADVENTURE, NOT JUST A JOB
By Paul Harral
Sometimes a job is just a job. Sometimes it is a calling.
It was a calling to those who once worked - and the few who remain - at United Press International.
Once as I was considering applying for a transfer to New York, the wire service's mecca, my wife asked about the money. It was the same as what I was earning at the time in Dallas or Denver or Chicago or wherever we were - I thought about transferring to New York a lot. It wasn't much.
"UPI isn't a religion, and we're not missionaries," Harriet said, "We won't be storing up stars in heaven for depriving ourselves in New York."
She was right about the money, but she was wrong about the religion.
Ask any former Unipresser.
"Whatever the mystique, it's lasted for me for three decades since I left, and that's three times as long as I spent as a Unipresser," says Bob Cox, whom I served with in Denver.
UPI was sold Monday to News World Communications Inc., which publishes The Washington Times and was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church. It was the fifth sale in two decades that also included two bankruptcies.
Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps, who spent 57 years at UPI, resigned the day after the announcement. Former Unipressers questioned the value of the existing service without her as a headliner.
United Press was founded in 1907 by newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps and merged with William Randolph Hearst's International News Service in 1958 to become UPI.
"In its heyday," says The New York Times, "UPI was the chief rival of The Associated Press and had a stable of future industry leaders - including Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley - who scored a number of scoops."
But UPI fell on hard times as newspapers, driven by the bottom line, saw no reason to support two general-interest wire services. That business usually went to the AP since it was a member-owned cooperative. UPI sold off the remaining radio clients to the AP last summer, and its existing service is directed primarily at the Internet.
UPI's recent trials would have killed many companies. But not this one. I asked former staff members who keep in touch by e-mail to explain what has kept UPI alive.
"The sense of competition with The Associated Press was uniquely invigorating, and there was a perverse sense of bemusement and pride in thriving in UPI's legendary cheapness - the thrill of using your wits to get a competitive job done in the frequent absence of adequate resources," says Tom Foty, who was with the UPI Audio Network in New York in 1977-1984.
UPI was cheap. Old-timers tell of a period when bureau managers had to turn in pencil stubs to get new pencils - and would steal pencil stubs when visiting other UPI bureaus. Maybe that's true; maybe it's not. But it described the service well.
"There was always a certain smugness about the AP, but we Unipressers were always too tired to be smug," said David Kelley, who worked at UPI in 1978-1990 in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. "We worked 80- to 100-hour weeks in the line bureaus because we thought what we did mattered."
UPI did attract its share of characters.
"Everyone knows about Helen Thomas. Few know that in its heyday, UPI had her equivalent in some way or other in each and every state operation," says Robert Kieckhefer, who spent 28 years in Chicago and Springfield, Ill.
"Oddballs and nutcases one and all, but talented journalists who got the job done with flair, affection and ability. One of us against three from AP wasn't a fair fight - it was no contest. We were always having more fun, and that made it easy to do a better job.
"People," Kieckhefer said. "It's always about people - not gray, anonymous, bureaucratic organizations."
Paul Basken spent 14 years at UPI, including five at the White House, and notes a common thread among those who left for more money, a wider audience or just plain job security.
"But it seems that many if not most who did leave, even if they found what they were looking for, soon could be heard telling those left behind that they missed something about UPI, be it the camaraderie, the freedom, or just the old feeling," Basken said.
I know that feeling well. I spent 10 years at UPI and left in 1977 after a tour as executive editor of national broadcast in Chicago.
I miss UPI every single day.
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Harral is vice president and editorial director for the Star-Telegram. His e-mail address is harralstar-telegram.com. You may telephone him at (817) 390-7836 or write him at P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101.
(Copyright Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Posted by permission.)