Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 26, 1993 TAG: 9308260137
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAROLYN CLICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sometimes, even those of us who loved working for the international news service would look at each other, grin ruefully and recite the labor mantra.
It was a catchy slogan, designed to tweak a cast of corporate executives who had obliterated a tradition of competitive, in-depth reporting and replaced it with slick marketing schemes and a raft of pink slips.
Last week, we got a chance to shake our heads and recite it all over again.
United Press International, once one of the most powerful news-gathering organizations in the world, handed walking papers to the last staff member in Virginia.
We all knew it was inevitable. Three weeks earlier, the Virginia UPI alumni met in Richmond to toast two departing staffers, G.L. Marshall and Paul Grant, who had decided to accept the company's latest buyout offer. It was only a matter of time before they came gunning for the last one.
There were cigars and champagne, and everyone got a check for a million dollars from petty cash.
As if on cue, news broke out, and the last man, Tim Cox, took to the phones, trying to get the latest information on a tornado that swept through Southside Virginia and crushed part of historic Petersburg.
In the old days, we would have joined the action, calling in reinforcements, working the phones, sending reporters to the scene. Editors from Atlanta and Washington would have dogged us for the latest leads, reminding us of the clients who were waiting impatiently for the updates.
But that was another time and place.
Instead, we hung around and recited the old stories that have bound us to one another for more than a decade.
Stories of election nights and executions; of the sweet, simple joy of beating The Associated Press at getting the news to newspapers and broadcasters around the state.
There was always something a little quirky about working for UPI.
There was the sheer, daunting volume of work - the ordinary grind of daily stories and broadcast updates and headlines and weather reports and hog markets - that left you breathless and a little frayed at the edges.
Breaking stories elevated the pace to an unruly frenzy, so when you finally stumbled out of the bureau after eight or 10 or 12 hours, it seemed as if the very texture of the world had changed.
There was never enough time or resources or manpower, but we were all young and energetic, and the old hands fueled us with the notion that we were part of some great democratic undertaking, something quintessentially American.
We were there to keep the AP honest and maybe beat them at their own game, scrappy underdogs who ran a little faster for the phones, wrote snappier leads and took a few more chances.
There were plenty of old hands when I started at UPI in 1982. Reporters who had covered the civil rights movement and Vietnam, who knew how to make a story sing.
They called the AP "Grandma" and figured we would be here forever, telling the world the news of the day. But then, they also figured there would always be two newspapers in every town.
UPI had cast its lot with afternoon editors way back when E.W. Scripps founded United Press in 1903. By the 1980s, when the Scripps company turned over UPI to two Tennessee entrepreneurs for a buck, there was hardly a handful left. There were other technological changes to contend with, including the growing power of CNN and satellite communications.
Two bankruptcies and a succession of owners who detonated whole bureaus at a time to stanch the flow of red ink didn't help. In 1982, there were nearly a dozen of us, reporters and photographers, around the state.
And now there are none.
I came to UPI from a weekly newspaper. Not long after, a Washington editor sent an electronic message about a story I was writing, suggesting ways to strengthen the introduction and make it interesting to readers in California as well as Virginia.
Remember, he said, you are not writing for a weekly, you are writing for the world.
A lot of the time, of course, we were simply writing for the newspaper down the street and the broadcaster across the state. But sometimes, a story would break so big and so fast, we would discover our bylines in far-flung places.
It was heady stuff, this business of informing the world, but it was not to last. In the end, neither the company nor the industry could sustain us, so one by one, we left. The business of news, we discovered, can be strictly business.
Now, most of us work in modern news or business offices, with computers and phones that work. We don't worry about the rent or how we'll pay the stringers. Most of all, we don't worry that we'll be alone in the bureau when a big story breaks.
Still, we came back to the jumbled second-floor office at 1001 E. Main St. one more time.
We laughed at younger versions of ourselves, looking serious and self-assured, staring out of group photos tacked haphazardly to the walls.
We grew up together here, an odd alliance of friends who shared a common love of language, a nose for news and a sense that we were once a part of something a little bigger than ourselves.
We took more pictures and read our personnel files and relived old battles. And maybe even thought to ourselves, "These are our good old days."
At the end, we stood in the hall, ready to leave, yet holding back. G.L.'s wife wept a little.
She is a counselor and thinks we do not cry enough, but I suspect in our heart of hearts, all of us have cried a river over UPI.
In a way, it's stupid, but you know what the union guys said.
Carolyn Click worked for UPI from 1982 to 1992, the last four years as Virginia state editor. Now she covers medicine and health for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB