LIVE WIRES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300240036-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 22, 2006
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: January 15, 1968
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Kewxweek-Nobrrl I/. McElroy
Teleprinter: Serving ill') 'tile world
Live Wires
"The world is not getting smaller,"
says Roger Tatarian, editor of United
Press International. "It's getting a lot big-
ger." At !lines, Tatarian-and his wire-
service counterpart at the Associated
Press, general manager Wes Gallagher-
feels like Atlas himself hunched under the
world's weight. The globe, bulging with
more and more news to be covered, is
taxing the resources of the AP and UPI.
And not only that, reports Nrwswrrx
Associate Editor Lee Smith: in addition
to competing with one another, these
days the two services have to worry
about being shoved off page one by sup-
plenicutal news services operated by AP
and UPI members and subscribers.
The New York Times News Service,
which can offer such headliners as col-
umnist James Reston, sold its service to
oily 50 newspapers in 1960, but iia\v
feed" up to 30,000 words of copy ever'ys
day to 200 domestic and 100 overseas,
clients. The Los Angeles Times-Wash-
ington Post News Service began five
years ago and now offers 35,000 to
40,000 words of Times and Post copy a
day to about 125 domestic and 75 for-
eign newspapers. Both services are open-
ing wires to Latin America this month.
British-based Reuters and the AP ended
a long-standing news-exchange agree-
ment last fall and since then Reuters has
been competing with both AP and UPI
to place American stories in the Ameri-
can press. Reuters, which has six bureaus
and 65 subscribers in the U.S., has just
signed up The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
and hopes to will over other new clients.
Such competition cuts in on AP and
UPI play. One day last week, the Times-
Post dominated page one of The Boston
Globe with the two lead stories: Presi-
dent Johnson's imposition of controls on
overseas investment and the hint by the
North Vietnamese Foreign Minister that
he will talk peace if the U.S. stops bomb-
ase 2006/081' 9~:I,-If'88-013148000300240036-8
f; `ic another day, The New York Post
leo . with a story from The London
E,, i News Service out of Cape Town
on heart-transplant operation. And
Rol Iici copy on U.S. stories was spotted
t1-1-l.1iout The New York Times.
iz and Read': The reasons for t'
su,: of the supplementals seem cleio
S ers can buy not only the pi'estit
o? gapers that sell them, but als
ra om the "lowest common denomi
n :opy of the AP and UPI daily re-
p kP and UPI have to provide ev-
e g from a superalarm system that
t.. ::tjor papers to a developing story
'y can band their own men In and
play ii-ir own stories-to a finished news
story which "rip and read" radio fl;
nonncers caul deliver over the air with li
tie laoic than a glance. "The quantity o:
rcaders is going up," says Bob Roy Buck-
ingham, manager of The New York Times
service. "We find that newspapers in
college towns are approaching us more
and more." Adds Rex Barley, manager
of The Los Angeles Times-Washington
Post service: "For our wire, we pick the
exclusives, the interpretives, the stories
that Al' and UPI don't have." (Not all.
The Chicago Tribune News Service,
down to 27 subscribers, announced last
week that, it would close at the end of
the month. One reason for the service's
close was Reuters's decision to distribute
and sell its service in the West by it-
self, a function the Tribune had served.)
The AP's Gallagher, for one, is not
worried that the supplementals will ever
offer a serious threat . to' his service.
"We've never lost a paper to a supple.
mentary service," he says. "As a service
of record, those supplementary services
just don't compete with us." True
enough, the vast networks of AP and
UPI bureaus scattered around the world
can deliver a report of state, regional,
sports and general news and photos that
no supplemental service intends to match.
The AP, for example, can supply a news-
paper with up to 400,000 words of copy
a day-twice as much as The New York
Times prints from all its sources.
Changing Times: Still, the growing
popularity of the supplementals under-
scores the need for both AP and UPI to
reflect on what kind of service they
should offer today's newspapers and ra-
dio and television stations. When the AP
was founded by six New York City news-
papers in 1848, the job was clear-cut
enough. The main task of the AP was
picking up dispatches on the clipper
ships from Europe and distributing cop-
ies to members. UP, founded by E.W.
Scripps in 1907, showed little more en-
terprise. (UP absorbed Hearst's Interna-
tional News Service in 1958 to form UPI.)
The roles of the news services today
are far more demanding. AP employs
some 2,300 newsmen around the world
and UPI about 2,000. Although both
services still rely on local newspapers
and radio and television stations to sup-
ply them with the news to put on the
wire, the services try to go after the sto-
ries themselves. The AP last sumincr
closed down fts teletype transmission ecu-
ter in San' Francisco, thus freeing deskl'
men from the chore. of editing copy.i
Now San Francisco staffers send all copy)
by facsimile directly to Los Angeles fore
distribution to members. "We're now al'
riling bureaus' says bureau chief Rol
Myers. "Before we had one guy out-~,
c the office. Now we regularly have;'
guys outside the office working on,
.Ties."
Both services are also trying to im i
+'mve their reports in other ways. Our
1 probloin," shlys Gallagher, "Is 'pack
ai;lag' the news in a way that. readers;
'.=iii keep up with events. It isn't enough
:t to report what happened today in .I
prus. We have to include enough
kground material so that the reader';
won't have to read anything else to get
Ili- whole story." UPI has emphasized
"lllockbuster" reports. A 4,600-word
piece by UPI senior editor Louis Cassels
lost summer examined the Negro Revo-
lution and-in a departure from tradi=
tion.ll news-service detachment--advo-
cated spending billions of dollars to
improve conditions in the ghetto.
Rates: The'chronic problem is money.
AP operates on .a budget of $55 million a
year laid UPI on. a budget of about $47
million and neither service has enough
money to handle all the projects it would
like to. (Reu.ters operates on a global
budget, of sonic $12 million a year.)I
News service- rates range from about
$150 a week .for a small paper receiving
only general and sports. news to $5,000 a
week for. a large, metropolitan daily.
"The services have increased their rates
about 10 per cent over the past year,"
says Tatarian, "but the workload has
gone up 50 to 60 per cent."
The shortage of funds means that
staffers are habitually overworked, par- I
ticularly at UPI bureaus which are al-
most always outmanned by AP. "I re-
member when the Selma trouble broke,"
says Jack Warner, UPI's 29-year-old bu-
iiewswMk-4olrprt Il. Mrl?:IMy
UPI's .Tatarian: More work
 /ll~ re.n1 n laulager in ~Aoaove l You Rgl?Pase 2006/0812 2 : Co IA-R1DP88'013`114R000300240036-8
v -y
wunti
wo stories: one on the march and a side- interviewed 36 crew members who had
ar on the violence. I wrote them both been aboard ships in the Gulf of Tonkin
t the same time-a take of one, then a incident and then filed 1 piece raising
ake of the other." Although Warner questions about what had actually hap-
cenls to find that kind of pressure stim- pened. But the stores was ignored by so
lat;ng, others don't. "What bugs me many newspapers , at team members
about the hard pace," says one UPI were dismayed. "One of the problems,"
staffer o01 the West Coast, "is the mental says one AP executive, "is gcttin r this
and cmpl io ,.d strain that comes from the new enterprise copy past crusty olci tole-
m tc'h nv%, ,lolse, the minute-by-aninute graph cditors,and Into the Japers.
dc;adlines and the need to be writer- Another task=force member seems to
editor-janitor-filer-puncher and one man sum up much of the mood at the news
band all at the same tinge. it's just a services these days-a mixture of appre-
stepping off place, a pause in life, a bad hension and pride-over the direction the
dream." Grulnhles one former AP man, services are taking. "I'm bottnt' geared
who worked for the service 27 yoarai to chasing, ambulances than doing this
"No matter how long a person's been stuff that takes three months. It's a new
th
h
"
ere
e ;still draws overnight shifts.
Nameless: Morale also suffers because
a wire-service man is generally a stranger
in his own hometown. His by-line rare-
ly shows up. Al I-tornc, assistant national
editor of The Washington, Post, gives
high marks to the AP's J6116 Hightower
at the State Department and Fred Hoff-
man at Defense and UPI diplomatic
correspondent Stewart i-Iens{e.y and UPI
Congressional correspondents; Arnold
Sawislak and Frank Eleazer. Bnt he adds
that because the Post has its own men
covering those beats, the service news-
men rarely get their copy in the paper.
Ill over-all coverage, AP, largely bc-
c1. if its greater size, emerges as the
stronger of the two services for compre-
hensive coverage. "For breaking stories
the AP is faster and will keep updating
the story with new leads," says The At-
lanta Constitution's managing editor, Tom
McRae. The AP has been consistently
strong in its Vietnam report for which it
ha.. \\.on three Pulitzer Prizes.
Tb?? AP also overpowers UPI with its
profusion of support services, including
AP newsfeatures? well-written Sunday
pieces, solid sports writing and science
coverage by a five-elan staff. The UPI
continues to provide a better Latin ?
American report and according to iiiany
editors provides sharper copy. "UPI' iss.'
still the best written of the three. It's the
easiest to understand quickly," one New
York editor says. Both wire services have
serious gaps, particularly in financial
news reporting, education and social-
welfare news.
Checkpoint: In some cases they seem
to be backsliding and in attempts at anal-
ysis have fallen into editorializing. James
I-Ioge, managing editor of The Chicago
Sun Times, complains that the AP's re-
port of the peace lllal?eh on the Pentagon
Last fall Contained phrases such as the
demonstrations had "tile peaceful bless-
ing of tllc North Vietnamese Govern-
ment." Says Iloge: "If you find out later
that a story is misleading, you wonder
how it got through the checkpoints."
Many of the problems-and much of
the promise-of the news services' at-
tempt to find their role are exemplified
in the AP's investigative task force in
Washington. The AP set up an eleven-
man team in March 1966 to roam the
4 -- - Nen?H.rock-Tony 1to11o '
AP's Gallagher: More interpretations
experience to sit down with a pack of
cigarettes and agonize over a story," he
says. "But this is a great change from
four or five years ago. We don't depend
on the members any more for news. We
get it ourselves.",
JAN 1 5.104$
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