Can U.P.I.—the Avis of wire services—keep its motor running?
The bulletin from Manila scored a clear beat for United Press International: Correspondent Max Vanzi, who was on the scene, was thus able to report 3½ hours ahead of his Associated Press rivals, who depended on government spokesmen, that Philippine Politician Benigno Aquino had been shot down moments after returning from exile. Yet when the declarative U.P.I, report and a hedged, uncertain A.P. bulletin came over the wire to the Washington Post shortly after 2 a.m. two weeks ago, editors decided to play it safe and put into their final edition a story saying only that Aquino had been arrested on arrival. Without their own reporter present, Post editors were just not ready to rely on any wire-service account.
The Post's reaction underscored the dilemma of the Avis of wire services: U.P.I, cannot outstrip the dominant A.P. except by showing enterprise on stories; yet when it does, clients chafe that its ambitions may lead to carelessness with facts. Post Foreign Editor Karen DeYoung said that "it made no difference" that the assertive report came from U.P.I, rather than A.P. Still, quite a few news executives share the judgment of William Greer, associate news editor of the Miami Herald: "U.P.I, has had a reputation for shooting from the hip." Adds Greer: "They have done a good job the past couple of years overcoming that."
Even so, if the past few years have been mortally difficult for second papers—only 29 cities still have fully independent, competing dailies—they have been almost as perilous for the second wire service. U.P.I.'s longtime owners, the Scripps and Hearst newspaper chains, were anxious to sell; they were absorbing annual losses of up to $7.7 million. At times it seemed that newspapers kept buying U.P.I, just to maintain a competitor for A.P. (which draws 1,299 of the 1,704 U.S. dailies, vs. 629 for U.P.I.). Says Executive Editor David Lawrence of the Detroit Free Press: "We felt that if A.P. were the only game in town, it would be easier for it to become a little arrogant."
Securing a buyer for U.P.I, was not easy. The owners offered it first to a consortium of U.S. newspapers, next to the British-based Reuters news agency, then to National Public Radio, before finding controversial new proprietors in June 1982. Buyers Douglas Ruhe and William Geissler had minimal experience in journalism, but plenty in political activism: Ruhe, 39, was twice arrested for civil rights protests in the 1960s, while Geissler, 37, spent almost a year in federal prison for refusing to be drafted during the Viet Nam War. Both had been publicists for the little-known Bahá'i faith, a Unitarian religion, founded 120 years ago in what is now Iraq, that claims 3 million followers. Furthermore, the two Nashville businessmen admittedly had little wealth, but refused to discuss the financing of their purchase of U.P.I. Insisted Ruhe at the time: "No one is behind us." As an unintended admission of unpopularity, that statement was uncomfortably true: their home-town Nashville Banner immediately dropped U.P.I, because of the furor.