United Press International Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Decline=== UPI came close to the size of the AP in the early 1960s, but as publishing companies began to pare their evening newspapers, it was dropped by papers that could no longer afford to subscribe to both UPI and the AP.<ref name="rip"/> UPI's failure to develop a television presence or subsidiary television news service has also been cited as one of the causes of its decline.<ref name="rip"/> By the early 1980s, the number of staffers was down to 1,800 and there were just 100 news bureaus.<ref name="old dog"/> Under pressure from some of [[E. W. Scripps]]' heirs, [[E. W. Scripps Company|the Scripps company]], which had been underwriting UPI's expenses at a loss for at least two decades, began trying to transfer control of UPI in the early 1980s. It tried to bring in additional newspaper industry partners and when that failed, engaged in serious negotiations with British competitor [[Reuters]], which wanted to increase its US presence. As detailed in "Down to the Wire", by Gordon and Cohen, cited in [[#Notes|Notes]], Reuters did extensive due diligence and expressed an interest in parts of the UPI service, but did not wish to maintain it in full. Scripps wound up giving the agency away to two inexperienced businessmen, Douglas Ruhe (son of [[David Ruhe]], a member of the [[Universal House of Justice]], the supreme governing body of the [[Baháʼí Faith]]) and William Geissler, originally associated with two better-known partners, who soon departed. Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for $1. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Scripps first injected UPI with a $5 million cash balance, in acknowledgement of the $1.0 – $1.5 million per month that UPI was already losing. Facing news industry skepticism about their background and qualifications to run an international news agency, Ruhe and Geissler watched an increase in contract cancellations. Despite serious cash flow problems, they moved UPI's headquarters from New York City to Washington, DC, incurring significant additional costs due to construction cost overruns. During this period, UPI's 25-year-old audio news actuality service for radio stations was renamed the [[United Press International Radio Network]]. But faced with recurring cash shortages and difficulty meeting payroll, the Ruhe-Geissler management sold UPI's foreign photo service and some rights to its US and foreign photos to the Reuters news agency.<ref name="photo accord"/> It also sold UPI's U.S. photo library, which included the archives of predecessor Scripps photo agency Acme and the pictures and negatives of International News Photos, the picture component of Hearst's INS to the [[Bettman Archive]]. Bettman was later sold to Microsoft founder [[Bill Gates]]'s separate [[Corbis Corporation]], storing them underground in Pennsylvania and digitizing them for licensing, frequently without any notation of their UPI origins. In August 2011 Corbis announced a deal with AP to distribute each other's photos to their clients, effectively combining the pre-1983 UPI library with that of its former main rival for some marketing purposes.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-ap-and-corbis-combine-image-libraries-in-distribution-deal/ |title=The AP And Corbis Combine Image Libraries In Distribution Deal |last1=Kaplan |first1=David |date=August 23, 2011 |publisher=paidContent |location=[[GigaOM]] |access-date=March 9, 2013 |archive-date=September 25, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110925030546/http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-ap-and-corbis-combine-image-libraries-in-distribution-deal/ }}</ref> In 2016 Corbis sold to the Visual China Group.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corbis-m-a-vcg-idUSKCN0V101L|title=Visual China buys Corbis Entertainment|work=Reuters |access-date=2018-05-21|language=en-US|archive-date=May 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180521191653/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corbis-m-a-vcg-idUSKCN0V101L|url-status=live}}</ref> UPI's remaining minority stake in UPITN was also sold and the agency was renamed Worldwide Television News (WTN). As with its photographs, UPI thereby lost all control of its newsfilm and video library, which is now held by WTN-successor [[Associated Press Television News]], which entered the video news field long after UPI left it. Years of mismanagement, missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed.<ref name="in sorrow"/> By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two [[Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code|Chapter 11]] {{nowrap|[[bankruptcy|bankruptcies]].<ref name="in sorrow"/><ref name=ergap85/>}} [[Mario Vázquez Raña]], a Mexican media magnate, with a nominal American minority partner, Houston real estate developer Joseph Russo, purchased UPI out of bankruptcy for $40 million, losing millions during his short tenure, and firing numerous high-level staff.<ref name="in sorrow"/> In 1988, Vázquez Raña sold UPI to Infotechnology, Inc., an information technology and venture capital company and parent company of cable TV's [[Financial News Network]], both headed by [[Earl Brian]], who also became UPI chairman.<ref name="in sorrow"/> In early 1991, Infotechnology itself filed for bankruptcy, announced layoffs at UPI and sought to terminate certain employee benefits in an attempt to keep UPI afloat. At that point, UPI was down to 585 employees.<ref name="cuts employees"/><ref name="to file"/> Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy for the second time, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able.<ref name="to file"/> In 1992, a group of [[Saudi Arabia|Saudi]] investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million.<ref name="old dog"/> By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices.<ref name="old dog"/> Although the Saudi-based investors claimed to have poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit.<ref name="old dog"/> The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to such websites as Excite and Yahoo.<ref name="old dog"/> At that point, UPI CEO [[Arnaud de Borchgrave]] orchestrated UPI's exit from its last major media niche, the broadcast news business that United Press had initiated in the 1930s. De Borchgrave maintained that "what was brilliant pioneering work on the part of UPI prior to World War II, with radio news, is now a static quantity and so far as I'm concerned, certainly doesn't fit into my plans for the future". He sought to shift UPI's dwindling resources into Internet-based delivery of newsletter services, focusing more on technical and diplomatic specialties than on general news. The rump UPI thus sold the client list of its still-significant radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival, the AP.<ref name="rip"/><ref name="audio"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! 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