United Press International

United Press International, United Press International (UPI) is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century. Today it is much smaller, with a different customer and product focus.

Formally named “United Press Associations”, for incorporation and legal purposes, but publicly known and identified as United Press or UP, it was created by the 1907 uniting of three smaller news syndicates by Midwest newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps.

It became United Press International 51 years later with its absorption of the International News Service (INS).

As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing domestically for about 90 years with the Associated Press and internationally with AP, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

At its peak, UPI had more than 6,000 media subscribers; 2,000 full-time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries. It began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall with the rising popularity of television news. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company.

The E.W. Scripps Company controlled United Press until its absorption of William Randolph Hearst’s smaller competing agency, INS, in 1958 to form UPI.

With the Hearst Corporation as a minority partner, UPI continued under Scripps management until 1982.

Helen Thomas Biography

Helen Thomas Biography, Helen Thomas (born August 4, 1920) is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist. She worked for the United Press and post-1958 successor United Press International (UPI) for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau manager.

She was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers from 2000 to 2010, writing on national affairs and the White House. She covered every President of the United States from the last years of the Eisenhower administration until the second year of the Obama administration.

She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club.

She has written six books; her latest, with co-author Craig Crawford, is Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do (2009). Thomas, who is of Lebanese Rûm/Melkite descent, retired on June 7, 2010, following comments she made about Israel, Jews and the Israel/Palestinian conflict.