75th Anniversary -- Sputniks, Wars and Rebellion
Jack James went in search of a missing raincoat one Sunday morning in June 1951 and wound up getting the scoop of his life.
UP's correspondent in Seoul remembered that his coat was at the U.S. embassy. When he arrived he discovered by accident (an officer asked, "What do you hear from the front?") that North Korean troops were pouring into South Korea. After some checking, James flashed the news, a worldwide exclusive for UP subscribers.
For many, the beat reflected the depth and maturity United Press had achieved as the 1950s unfolded. Editors who in the early days praised UP's hustle and color, but sometimes questioned accuracy, came to rely heavily on UP's Korean dispatches.
United Press grew at a steady rate during the years after World War II, increasing the number of clients worldwide between 1947 and 1957 from 2,869 to 4,833.
------ PHOTOS: UP Hollywood correspondent Vernon Scott, who has interviewed the stars for 30 years, chats with Marilyn Monroe in 1953; President Eisenhower opens new UP circuit in a 1959 ceremony. ------
On Jan. 2, 1952, UP acquired Acme Newspictures and for the first time offered competitive news and newspicture services.
Six years later, UP merged with one of its competitors, International News Service owned by The Hearst Corporation, and the logotype UPI made its appearance in the summer of 1958. It was thought the "I" would vanish after a time. "UPI" stuck and came to symbolize the international scope of the service.
The E.W. Scripps Company retained 95 percent of UPI, with The Hearst Corporation holding 5 percent.
By the mid-1950s, the headlines were about President Eisenhower, the Cold War andthe discovery of the Salk vaccine.
------ PHOTOS: Turbulent years: Merriman Smith interviews President Kennedy in 1962; UPI photo captures the glare of a Nevada nuclear weapons test; a rocket blasts off toward space. ------
UP's Russell Jones captured a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.
The Soviet Union hurled a tiny sphere into orbit in 1957, the beep-beep of Sputnik ushering in the space race.
Racial unrest came to the South, and for the next decade UPI reporters and photographers distinguished themselves on such "battlefields" as Birmingham, Selma, St. Augustine, Atlanta and, in the North, Newark and Detroit.
The 1960s began with the election of President John F. Kennedy, chronicled by UPI White House correspondent Merriman Smith. Only three years later Smith was reporting Kennedy's assassination, for which Smith won a Pulitzer.
------ PHOTOS: UPI covered the war in Vietnam -- and the reaction at home. Rikio Imajo, today Newspictures editor for Asia and the Pacific, stands by a helicopter. UPI's Kyoichi Sawada (right) confers with Moshe Dayan in Vietnam. Demonstrators march in Washington. ------
As American troops became deeply involved in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, student protests mounted. One of the rebellious youths came from a prominent Midwest family, and UPI's Luncinda Franks and Thomas Powers were awarded Pulitzers for their sensitive profile of Diana Oughton, the rich girl who became a revolutionary and died in a homemade bomb factory in Manhattan.
U.S. forces began pulling out of Indochina in 1972, leaving 50,000 dead. Casualties among the nearly 100 UPI journalists who covered the war included five dead, with two missing and presumed dead.
Photographers David Kennerly, Kyoichi Sawada and Toshio Sakai won Pulitzers during the war. Sawada was killed in Cambodia after returning for another tour of duty from a desk job.
From the 1950s onward, UPI's range of services expaned greatly. UPI pioneered a new kind of radio service in 1958, the UPI Audio Network, offering both newscasts and separate voice reports.
UPI started a cable news wire and became partners in UPITN, which provides TV newsfilm worldwide; United Press Canada was formed in 1978, expanding coverage throughout Canada; and UPI teamed with Commodity News Services of Knight-Ridder Newspapers to form Unicom News, a commodity and economic news service.
------ PHOTO: "You will recall my old slogan that every reporter ought to be a newsreel camera. The dispatches he will be remembered for longest are those which make the reader see, feel and hear the news events described." -- Hugh Baillie ------