The Press: The First Half-Century

In bars and press clubs around the world, United Press staffers gathered this week to celebrate an event that was uniquely of their own making: the United Press Associations' 50th anniversary. If the U.P. men bragged more and drank more than most newsmen at play, they could be said merely to be obeying the deep competitive urge that has made their hardfisted, bustling wire service second in size only to the 109-year-old Associated Press—and often ahead of it in covering the news.

Unlike the staid A.P., a nonprofit cooperative owned by its member...