75th Anniversary Report -- Between the Great Wars
Boasting of beats from morocco and Moscow, Paris and Peking, United Press moved into the 1920s with a slogan proclaiming "Around the World, Around the Clock."
New bureaus were springing up. A morning newspaper service (United News) was created, along with a syndicate (United Features) to market special features and first person accounts by notables.
Edward Keen, the European manager, was told to track down the former Crown Prince of Germany who was living in exile on an island off the Dutch coast. Keen found the water separating the island from the mainland clogged with ice and cabled New York for instructions.
"Walk," was the one word reply from Karl Bickel, soon to become UP's president.
Keen did and signed up the exiled monarch for a 12-part series.
UP operated with a budget of $3 million in 1923 when Bickel became president (compared to $110 million 60 years later), as the service reached 1,000 newspaper clients in 36 countries.
Bickel spotted the potential for new revenue from the radio stations starting up in the United States but unable to purchase news from either UP or AP. In 1924, UP experimented with brief bulletins on the presidential elections for radio stations affiliated with UP-served newspapers in a dozen cities.
A debate raged for several years over whether to provide a condensed, formatted news report for the infant broadcast business. Bickel argued that radio news would not present a threat to newspapers, but would increase interest among readers and stimulate newspaper sales.
"Radio ought to be willing to pay its own way," he said.
Broadcasters agreed. In 1935, UP decided to sell news direct to radio stations and many promptly signed up. AP announced it would not sell to broadcasters but later jumped into the marketplace.
United Press grew faster with the new revenue, and continued to pioneer in the broadcasting field in the years that followed.
Another new medium was on the rise -- photographic journalism. In 1925, UP's parent company set up a news photo agency. Acme Newspictures, later to become the picture department of United Press.
Acme photographers operated with the same zeal as UP reporters.
Harold Blumenfeld, who went on to become editor of Acme and executive editor of UPI Newspictures, recalled flying hundreds of miles out to sea in a pontoon-equipped plane to pick up photos of the R-101 airship disaster in France. The pictures were aboard the steamship Leviathan. When he and his pilot found the vessel, the pictures were toss overboard tied to a buoy. Clinging to a wingtip, Blumenfeld snatched up the package and the plane roared off to New York.
------ PHOTOS: Among the well-known United Press bylines during World War II: Frank H. Bartholomew, who later would become a UP president, interviews a Marine on Okinawa; A young Walter Cronkite (left) calls in a UP story. ------ PHOTOS: UP started the 1930s interviewing Babe Ruth (with UP sports writer Jack Cuddy), but finished the decade covering World War II. The fierce blitzes of 1941 (above) forced UP staffers out of their London headquarters; while in Paris reporters wore gas masks during drills. ------
Acme sent its first telephotos from Cleveland and the Republican convention that nominated Calvin Coolidge. In April 1925 the first radiophoto was of a volcano erupting in Hawaii.
"It looked a little like a woodcut, but it traveled 5,000 miles in only 15 minutes," an Acme editor said.
At the outbreak of World War II, the number of UP clients had grown to 1,715 newspapers and radio stations in 52 stations. UP bylines blossomed from every war front, and included President Hugh Baillie and Frank H. Bartholomew, a future UP president.
Five Unipressers died and a dozen were wounded during the war.
UP had emerged as a major international new service, with a worldwide reputation for enterprise and independence.
The poet Stephen Vincent Benet summed it up in a 1933 Fortune Magazine article: "The United Press is . . . a business concern . . . but there is another motive which drives them quite as strongly. You can call it pride of profession or professional zeal or enthusiasm or self-hypnosis. But whatever you call it, it is as common to the stockholding executives and the lunch-money copy boy -- it is the strongest of the bonds that holds the UP together.
------ PHOTO: "I understand from casual conversations . . . there is a feeling the opposition has bucked up somewhat during the last few months. Fine. The stronger the better. The United Press always thrives on competition, and the hard the competition the faster we grow andthe stronger we thrive." -- Karl Bickel ------