Organization
UPI's headquarters are in New York City where its executive officers and department heads are located. Internationally, UPI is organized on a geographical division basis with the various division headquarters located in London, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, San Juan P.R., and Montreal.
UPI's operating and administrative departments are headed by vice presidents who report through the vice president and general manager to the president and chief executive. International operations are headed by the senior vice president to whom international division managers report.
In the News department, under the editor-in-chief, are the managing editor, foreign editor, national editor, two international editors and the vice president and Washington manager who is in charge of operations in the U.S. capital. The Newspictures department is similarly organized on a smaller scale under the vice president/newspictures.
News and Newspictures operations are organized on a geographic regional or divisional basis. Nine regional news centers in the U.S. are responsible for coverage and service within the regions in which they are located. The six international divisions are Europe/Africa/Middle East, Asia/Anzac. South America, Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean, and Canada. A news editor and newspictures editor in each is responsible for coverage within and service to his area of responsibility.
International Communications
As noted in Section I, international service has been of major importance to UPI and its development since its early days. It has stressed the importance of an informed world citizenry of free access to sources of information and unrestricted exchange of news.
For many years, the only means of international exchange of news was expensive commercial cable facilities or mail. Cable rates sometimes ran to $1 per word or more which made reports from foreign correspondents and service to overseas newspapers extremely expensive, even when it was written in the tightest "cablese" to save words. Even after rates came down to a few cents a word, many newspapers could afford to receive only a few hundred or few thousand words a day in which a news service had to attempt to cover all of the important news of the world.
The development of international high frequency radio and introduction of teletype to replace Morse code on international circuits provided a cheaper alternative to the cables. News services and newspapers pressed for volume tariffs based on time used rather than the number of words transmitted and the introduction of these tariffs along with improved techniques in the late '30s and '40s enabled United Press to expand both its coverage and its service to overseas subscribers.
Today, hundreds of thousands of words are flashed across the ocean via cable or satellite at speeds ranging from 60 to 1,200 words per minute. Copy from bureaus all over the world flows through New York whence it is directed by computer to interested points in the U.S. and other parts of the world. However, each division is responsible for its own coverage and most control the service within their own divisions. Bureaus in the Europe/Africa/Middle East division, for example, code their copy so that a message-switching computer in Brussels relays it to the appropriate circuits within the division. The division news desk in London can direct copy to additional circuits if it wishes. Most copy also is coded to go to New York where the international desk, foreign desk and Latin America desks edit it and send it onward.
International Service
The international desk, for example, is responsible for service going to the Europe/Africa/Middle East and Asian divisions so it melds copy from the former with news from the rest of the world for relay to Asia. Likewise, copy from Asia and the rest of the world is edited and coded for relay to Europe. The message switching computers in Brussels and Hong Kong relay this copy along with material originating in their own divisions, to provide a full world service for their subscribers.
Copy from Latin America, most of it in Spanish, is filed directly from Latin American bureaus into the New York computer. The Latin American desk, under the direction of an Argentine journalist and staffed entirely by Latin Americans, translates copy from the rest of the world into Spanish for relay by satellite or leased line to subscribers in Latin America. News from Latin America makes up 45-50 percent for Latin American subscribers.
In the years immediately after World War II, UPI provided services in a variety of languages directly to many small newspapers and broadcasters. However, as personnel costs rose and national news agencies gained strength, most translated services became uneconomic and disappeared. Instead, UPI made agreements with agencies such as DPA, ANSA, EFE and others to deliver world services in English which the national agencies translate for distribution within their own countries along with their own national services. The Spanish- language service to Latin America, serving 20 countries, is the only major non-English service which continues.
UPI desks tailor services for various parts of the world to meet the requirements of that area. As noted, 45-50 percent of the Latin American services consists of news filed from Latin American bureaus or other points about Latin America. Much of that material will go only to Latin America and only the more important Latin American stories are translated into English and transmitted to the U.S. and other parts of the world. By the same token, the Asian service includes more news from Asia, the mid-West U.S. service more news from the mid-West, etc.
International Organization
UPI operates 177 bureaus worldwide; 96 are located in the United States and 81 abroad. It has a full-time staff of 1,823 worldwide; of these 1,245 work in the United States and 578 abroad.
While UPI is known as an American news agency, its scope is worldwide and its staff is international. Many of its top executives have worked in its international divisions and its news staff includes many non-Americans.
In Latin America, either the bureau manager or his assistant in every bureau is a Latin American and the rest of the staff members are Latin American. In Asia, five of the nine news bureau managers are Asians. The news editor for Japan is a Japanese and the Hong Kong newspictures editor is a Filipino. The manager in Australia is an Australian. News bureau managers in Europe include a Greek, a Lebanese, an Irishman, a Swiss, a Belgian and several Australians and British. Some such nationals have been transferred to the U.S.
An estimated 11 million words of news copy and nearly 200 newspictures are transmitted by UPI every day in the U.S. and abroad. Its worldwide communications network is a two-way complex encompassing more than 2 million miles of circuitry and channels speeding news and pictures to and from countries on every continent in a matter of minutes.
UPI bureaus in Europe/Africa/Middle East and subscribers in Europe are interconnected on a network of voice-grade circuits which are multiplexed into telephoto and teleprinter channels. The news channels operate through the switching computer in Brussels, as described above, as circuits in Asia and Australia operate through the Hong Kong computer.
The central computer in New York interconnects the two as well as all the bureaus and subscribers in the United States, Canada and Latin America. As a result, any UPI bureau in the world can send news directly to any other UPI bureau or subscriber. It is an automatic relay system spanning the globe, making it possible for UPI to operate almost as though it were one huge, worldwide newsroom.
UPI Newspictures serves more than 1,400 newspapers and television stations around the world on its picture networks, which are an integrated system of landlines, transoceanic cables, satellites and high frequency radio beamcasts. The domestic network serves more than 700 subscribers in 600 U.S. cities and extends into Mexico and Canada. The European picture network links 40 cities in 20 countries, and reaches another 350 cities through the circuits of cooperating agencies. UPI pioneered satellite transmission of newspictures to and from Asia, and it now serves Asia, Australia and Europe through this advanced communications medium. High frequency radio beamcasts deliver pictures to South and Central America, the Caribbean and portions of Mexico, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Other portions of the latter areas are served by leased landlines or cable circuits.
Other Services
In addition to its worldwide news and newspictures coverage, UPI provides various other services. It launched the first major international TV newsfilm service in 1951. Today, UPITN (jointly owned by UPI, Independent Television News of Great Britain and the Global Communications Corporation) serves more than 120 television stations and national networks in 70 countries abroad, as well providing international footage to the ABC and NBC networks in the U.S.
UPI Audio provides voice coverage--actualities and voice reports--to more than 900 radio and television stations throughout the United States and a few points abroad. It was introduced in 1958.
The UPI Cable Newswire is a special service for United States cable television systems. Begun in 1973, it is one of UPI's fastest growing domestic services and now serves 311 cable systems.
UPI Unistox service is a high-speed transmission system for delivery of stock market information to U.S. newspapers with automated production facilities.
UPI's computerized services include DataNews, which delivers a complete world and regional news report at 1,200 words per minute directly into computers at newspapers and broadcast stations in the U.S. and Canada.
It will be extended to Europe in 1978.
The Special Washington Wire supplies a daily news report to government offices, executives and foreign and domestic news correspondents in the U.S. capital, and to business and industrial firms nationwide.
UPI also provides news bulletins to ships at sea via ITT and RCA wireless facilities.
UPI's International Features Department acts as the sales agency outside the U.S. for five domestic feature syndicates and represents five foreign syndicates, some of them in both the U.S. and abroad. It also sells and distributes freelance material from a number of countries and has syndication rights to material from a number of overseas publications.
Unicom News, a commodity and economic wire service, serves the international business community outside the U.S. and Canada. It was launched in 1977 and is jointly owned by UPI and Commodity News Services, a subsidiary of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc.
Newspapers and broadcasters in the United Kingdom are served by United Press International (U.K.) Ltd., headquartered in London. Canadian newspapers and broadcasters are served by United Press International of Canada, Ltd., with headquarters in Montreal.