From Uncle Walter to the World Wide Web.
United Press International is going from the presses and the airwaves to cyberspace, making major changes to become a leading knowledge-based product supplier to the Internet.
The nearly 100-year-old news wire, which gave television legend Walter Cronkite his first major journalism home, will consolidate efforts at its Washington headquarters to "create new products designed to deliver critically important news and information that is all too frequently ignored by the mass media," says UPI president and CEO Arnaud de Borchgrave.
Meanwhile, a joint statement with longtime rival the Associated Press last week says UPI will sell its broadcast wire and radio division to the AP as part of UPI's plan to turn its attention all but exclusively to the Internet.
"(We will) concentrate on top-notch journalism, adding depth, detail, focus, analysis, and perspective on major issues," says de Borchgrave, former editor of the Washington Times. "Our objective is to provide value to clients in an era of increasingly shallow reporting.
"The world does not need another traditional wire service," de Borchgrave continued. "A billion people - one-sixth of all humanity - will be on the Internet by the year 2005. UPI will be there as well…(our) goal is to establish the traditions in journalism that will stand for the next 100 years."
UPI's new line of information products will be made available under the new umbrella name Knowledge@Work
