United Press International

===United Press Associations===
[[File:E W Scripps.jpg|thumbnail|Portrait photograph of [[E. W. Scripps]], c. 1912]]
Beginning with the ''[[Cleveland Press]]'', publisher [[E. W. Scripps]] (1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. Because the then-recently reorganized [[Associated Press]] refused to sell its services to several of his papers, most of them evening dailies in competition with existing AP franchise holders, in 1907 Scripps merged three smaller syndicates under his ownership or control, the Publishers Press Association, the Scripps-McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association, to form United Press Associations, with headquarters in New York City.<ref name="deadline"/><ref name="scrippshoward"/><ref name="100years"/>

Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency, also named '''United Press''', that existed in the late 1800s, partly in cooperation with the management of the original New York-based AP and partly in existential competition with two Chicago-based organizations also using the AP name (as detailed at [[Associated Press]] and in AP's 2007 history, ''Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else'', cited in [[#Notes|Notes]]).<ref name="deadline"/><ref name="scrippshoward"/>

Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP's, Scripps required that there be no restrictions on who could buy news from his news service, and he made the new UP service available to anyone, including his competitors. Scripps also hoped to make a profit from selling that news to papers owned by others. At that time and until [[World War II]], most newspapers relied on news agencies for stories outside their immediate geographic areas.<ref name="deadline"/><ref name="rip"/>

Despite strong newspaper industry opposition, UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935, years before competitor AP, controlled by the newspaper industry, did likewise.

Scripps' United Press was considered "a scrappy alternative" news source to the AP. UP reporters were called "Unipressers" and were noted for their fiercely aggressive and competitive streak.<ref name="rip"/> Another hallmark of the company's culture was little formal training of reporters; new hires were often thrust into a "sink-or-swim" situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject. They were weaned on UP's famous and well-documented (though frequently misappropriated and misquoted) slogan of "Get it first, but FIRST, get it RIGHT."<ref name="deadline"/> Despite controversy, UP (and later UPI) became a common training ground for generations of journalists.<ref name="rip"/>

[[Walter Cronkite]], who started with United Press in [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]], gained fame for his coverage of [[World War II]] in Europe and turned down [[Edward R. Murrow]]'s first offer of a [[CBS]] job to stay with UP, but who later went on to anchor the ''[[CBS Evening News]]'', once said, "I felt every Unipresser got up in the morning saying, 'This is the day I'm going to beat the hell out of AP.' That was part of the spirit. We knew we were undermanned. But we knew we could do a darn good job despite that, and so many times, we did."<ref name="rip"/>
	
Despite that, like all agencies that deal with huge volumes of timely information, UP and later UPI had its share of remembered mistakes. As recounted in the various printed histories of UPI cited in [[#Notes|Notes]], the most famous one came early in its history. UP's president, [[Roy W. Howard]], then traveling in France, telegraphed that the 1918 armistice ending World War I had been declared four days before it happened. Howard's reputation survived and he later became a Scripps partner, whose name appeared in one of the Scripps subsidiary companies, Scripps-Howard. But the mistake dogged UP/UPI for generations. Still, the agency's reporters were often able to tell stories more quickly and accurately although they were usually outnumbered by the competition. In 1950, for example, UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival, the AP. ''The New York Times'' later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it.<ref name="deadline"/>