The AP Announces It Will Offer Two Leads for Some Stories.
What We Really Need Are Two Different Stories.
Oh, Bring Back the REAL UPI!

Philip Stone April 1, 2005

The Associated Press (AP), owned by its US newspaper members, has announced that to help those newspapers compete more successfully with Internet news sites, that it will now offer two different lead paragraphs for some stories. Actually what the American media really needs is a competing news agency – it used to have one in United Press International (UPI) and when the real UPI was alive and well American and international journalism was at its very finest.

And that would provide not just two leads for every story, but two stories for every story. A much better solution!

The REAL UPI met its death in the mid 1980s for a variety of reasons, not the least being that the American media stopped supporting it. Its offspring using the same name, having gone through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and various international owners including Mexican, Saudi and now South Korean, is a very poor relation to what once was.

But when the real UPI was alive under the EW Scripps umbrella, not only American journalism flourished but also international journalism because UPI was far more respected and revered outside the US than it was at home.  The competition between the two agencies was fierce, each fighting to be first and right, each keeping the other on its editorial toes, and, unfortunately for both, each undercutting the price of the other so that neither had the funds available to do the editorial job as well as might have been.

The two leads now announced by the AP is not new journalism – UPI used to do it on a regular basis.  In those days the Internet was still a gleam in some scientist’s eye – the competition was between morning newspapers and afternoon newspapers, and broadcasters.  AP, being owned by its US newspaper owners, was particularly strong in the morning market. UPI’s stronghold was the afternoon market and both agencies split the broadcast market, although for many years UPI served that market alone.

Writing overnight news agency leads for an afternoon newspaper takes a particular talent because bureaus would close if possible early in the evening and those stories had to be written before going home.  Those leads often had to stand up for up to 12 hours before they would be published in an American newspaper or until such time as new developments allowed for a refreshing lead.

And because of that time frame it was common practice to offer a very featurish type of lead and also a “straight news” type of lead.

So when the AP now announces, some 20 years after UPI was sold off for the first time for $1 to a couple of guys from Nashville, Tennesee, that it now is going to offer two leads to help newspapers compete with Internet news sites, it makes old-timers who remember the days of two agencies cry out: “Why just two leads, why not two news agencies?”

That’s not going to happen because costs are already tight enough in the newspaper business without adding the cost of another news source, but Unipressers  (and those aren’t just the people who used to work for UPI but also many clients who counted themselves as part of the family) will be excused for gloating somewhat when they read AP Managing Editor Mike Silverman’s explanation to AP members:

“This initiative comes in response to what we’ve been hearing from many editors – that you need to be able to offer your readers something fresh so they will pick up the newspaper and read a story, even though the facts have been splashed all over the Web and widely broadcast. To further this goal AP will NOT be moving these optional leads to our Internet services. They are designed strictly for print.”

Sullivan’s note makes clear he is trying to help newspapers.  Never forget that the AP is a cooperative owned by its 1,700 US newspaper members. Its priority is to ensure its owners are looked after as best as possible, at the expense of any other type of client.

Reading between the lines, AP newspapers are not happy about seeing the same stories they are printing splashed throughout the AP client universe.  Newspaper circulation is down –indeed there is a great suspicion that newspapers readers are deserting newspapers to read news on the web -- and AP member editors obviously are demanding something different to set them far apart from their competition.

Back in the days when many metropolitan cities had a morning newspaper and an afternoon newspaper that exact problem was taken care of because there were two news agencies. In the larger metropolitan areas most newspapers used to subscribe to both services, but the traditional likelihood was that the AM relied mostly on AP stories and the PM, to be different from what appeared that morning, would use UPI. Not just different leads, but different stories. What hurt UPI in its last years before the Scripps sale was that PM newspapers were becoming a dying breed – either going out of business or switching to the AM, and the UPI client base dwindled with them.

The truth is that just having different leads doesn’t solve the problem. Since Sullivan has started down this track there is only one possible real solution – different stories for the newspaper market and differently written stories for the Internet. That is not as far fetched as it sounds – it is exactly what AP and UPI did for its broadcast clients.

The AP accountants will not be happy with that solution because it means more writers, editors etc., but at the end of the day it allows for what its newspaper members are looking for – stories written exclusively for them.  The AP has always struggled between the desire of its newspaper members to have as much “exclusive” news as possible at the lowest cost possible, versus selling its news to broadcasters, the Internet etc, bringing more money in to keep membership fees down, but at the editorial cost of more AP news out there competing with its owners.

Truth is, one of the great shames of the US media is that it allowed what happened to UPI after the Scripps sale. The American media stopped supporting UPI in the 1980s because it didn’t like having the financial details of the sale kept secret (it sold for $1 plus Scripps financial guarantees for five years) and it didn’t take kindly to the B’HaI religious beliefs of the guys who bought it.

That is something one would have expected the EW Scripps Company to have taken into consideration in doing the sale, but those were desperate days for Scripps – no one else except Reuters really stepped forward to show much interest – and because a Scripps Foundation basically owned the company there was a fear of major tax issues ahead if UPI was not disposed of.

This writer on several occasions accompanied the new owners on visits to newspapers that had been long-time UPI clients under Scripps only to cancel their subscriptions once Scripps had unloaded.  Publishers were polite but firm – they were going to save money by going down to one agency and the agency they chose to stay with was AP. They never talked about religious beliefs but media stories of the day concentrated on that issue, but they were also angry that the financial details of the sale were kept confidential and they thought there was some sort of B’Hai conspiracy. That gave them one more reason to drop UPI.

Interestingly, on the international scene, the sale and whom it was sold to didn’t affect the business that much – UPI had a deserved excellent international reputation with some client relationships going back 50 years or more. Whereas in the US UPI usually charged less than the AP for its services, outside the US its rates were often double the competition because internationally it had a very well respected and fast news service whereas the AP was seen as “too American.”  Indeed the UPI of today still has some of those international subscribers who, for all the upheaval over the years, just could not bring themselves to break such a business relationship.

The UPI sale by Scripps was the beginning of the end. AP management was overjoyed because UPI and AP fought like cat and dog for every subscriber, which meant keeping subscriber rates  far lower than they really should have been. Once UPI had gone American publishers understood their mistake as the AP then started charging what it said it needed– after all it was then the only game left in town.

To their credit AP journalists at the time were saddened by UPI’s demise. They recognized more than most that the editorial competition between both agencies kept their products as sharp as possible. They realized that without that competition the industry would never be the same again.

There’s no point living in the past. What is gone is gone, but hopefully it is not forgotten. Seeing a note from an AP Managing Editor that he is trying to come up with ways that its print clients can compete with its Internet clients on the same stories cries out what is really wrong with American news agency journalism today. What the American media really need is a choice of news agencies to provide all the international, national, and parochial news the AP provides, and the willingness to pay for the privilege.