United Press International Downhold Clubs
Struggling UPI Gives Up White House Correspondent After 100 Years
Former United Press International employees continue to gather occasionally to recall when UPI competed aggressively with the Associated Press news agency for headlines in American media. They call their groups "Downhold" clubs in memory of UPI’s frequent penny-pinching periods. When they were still working for the news agency, they called themselves "Unipressers."
As staffers, they boasted that their mission was "to keep AP honest." More accurately, it was to keep AP hustling. Or just to keep UPI alive.
In 2007, its 100th anniversary, UPI cut 11 more staffers and ended a century of having a White House correspondent. The wire service that once had bureaus in every state and several thousand employees is down to a few dozen writers. It is no longer any match for AP.
UPI, AP Competed for Media Coverage
Until the 1980s, UPI and AP battled for positions in American newspapers, television and radio newscasts. They hustled to get stories first, even by a few minutes.
They bugged each other about the least inaccuracies. They promoted their journalism awards and their victories over each other. They competed for business with the quality and speed of their news reports or by cutting prices. Newspapers and stations played them against each other.
Some papers and stations used AP or UPI. The better ones bought both services because in their hour-by-hour competition each agency produced great stories. American media relied on them for practically every story outside their local service areas.
Associated Press A Media Cooperative
AP and UPI were different animals offering identical services to the same market. Associated Press was a non-profit cooperative formed by American newspapers to provide them with news coverage outside their immediate areas. They swapped stories with each other and with foreign news operations.
UPI was a private company owned by the Scripps newspaper family. It hired newspeople and teletype operators around the world.
Not Glamorous But Exciting
The work was not glamorous, but often exciting. A Unipresser could cover a presidential visit one day and a football game the next. And there was always that mission, to push AP. They worried about the nation being left with one news agency.
Since UPI seemed to pay as little as it could get away with, both newsman and teletype operators formed guilds, as did AP. Periodically the guilds either struck or threatened to strike for better pay and work conditions.
UPI was managed mostly by former newsmen, a breed not distinguished for its business brillance. Bureau managers were often not advised of their budgets, if such existed. They were sometimes required to double as salesmen, a chore they gladly shoved aside in news emergencies.
Tough to Budget News Coverage
It was not easy budgeting news coverage during wars, the civil rights years or the space exploration years. To their credit, neither AP nor UPI pinched pennies on major stories. But AP had bigger bucks and could assess its members for extra costs. UPI could not.
UPI tried to control costs between major stories by issuing its infamous "downhold" orders to the bureaus, instructing them to cut spending on everything from overtime to travel.
In the 1970s, the many weak links in the UPI business chain began to show severe strain and in 1982 Scripps sold the company. It has since been through two bankruptcies and several owners, the latest being Reverend Sun Myung Moon's News World Communications.
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