United Press International, the time-honored wire service that became a sleeping dog after slipping into bankruptcy in the 1980s and 1990s, previews its new image next month, based on Internet-delivered knowledge packages. The debut is part of a new business plan that is supposed to help UPI become profitable for the first time in decades.
Knowledge package customers - newspapers, Web sites, zines - can select custom-tailored news and information packages that start at $125 per week and can be delivered via e-mail or FTP. (Eventually, media relations execs will have countless opportunities to pitch UPI Knowledge Package ideas as its roster expands and more concepts are pursued.)
"For everyone who wants knowledge, we believe we can find a niche to fill," says UPI Product Development Director Garry Meldrum. "The real bedrock of UPI has been the evolutionary way it has captured information - news and images - to provide that unique perspective....And we expect to be using the Internet fully within a year while still delivering unique coverage."
The four components of a package include text, audio, video and photos. The first package will cover NASCAR and a full preview will be at Seybold, a technology show, in September in San Francisco.
Interest already is brewing.
"Providing content packages where you have access to text, photos, video and audio - everything you need to know - is an idea we're very interested in," says Dana Graves, associate producer of news at Excite, Redwood City, Calif. "We're already discussing with UPI the idea of doing something like this for the congressional campaign."
Out of the Red and into the Black
The delivery of UPI's new image has been bolstered with PR, including heavy contributions from the new CEO, a fresh press kit, a focus on people and partnering with large computer companies.
The Washington, D.C.-based news agency has never turned an overall annual profit in its 91 years and has, in part, based its future on the 1997 arrival of CEO James Adams.
Adams, the London Sunday Times icon writer, was hired to lead this virtual exhumation by UPI owner ARA Group International. AGI is comprised of Saudi Arabian investors who have dumped millions into reviving UPI.
Adams seems to have pulled off a PR coup. Instead of UPI closing the door on its past and opening a new one, Adams is giving UPI time to grow into its new coat. As most communicators know, readying your audience is half the battle.
And Adams has approached the image makeover with an almost cause-celebre attitude. He spoke to us last week, a day before his speech at the Forbes/GartnerGroup CIO Executive Congress in Lake Tahoe, Calif., on a car phone while he zipped through traffic.
"I inherited loss-making operations that hadn't any logic to them," Adams says. "No business decisions are made now without a plan attached to them. To sign off on any initiative, we have to have large profit margins. It has become a ruthless decision-making process."
Adams won't reveal exact profit margins, but says operating expenses are 3 percent under budget this year.
Adams has had success as a spokesperson even though he has received little media training, according to sources. He could be to publishing what Steve Jobs is to technology as evidenced by articles in Computerworld, Editor & Publisher, Forbes, Information Week, The Washington Times and USA Today.
UPI's Knowledge Know-How
Even though UPI has significantly pared down its workforce, the Knowledge Package concept is one that won't fly without people. UPI is seeking writers and entrepreneurs worldwide who can fit the bill should a client have a particular need.
For example, UPI's prototype knowledge package covering the World Cup in France included a first-person account of the Jamaica vs. Croatia game from the stands in Lens, France. This differed widely from the traditional 15-inch news story Associated Press delivered.
Indeed, UPI no longer is basing its fame on Pulitzer-prize winning photos, such as the shot of John John at Kennedy's funeral, or Helen Thomas, the diminutive White House Press Corps. journalist who kept UPI's image alive when little else did.
This year, UPI acquired the campy political Gridlock and Load Web zine, http:/www/.gridlockmag.com, created by cyber journalist James Gordon Meek.
But UPI appears, too, to have not forsaken long-time employees who help propel the UPI name, while still welcoming fresh blood.
UPI's Web site, http://www.upi.com pays homage to Claude Salhani, director of UPI Newspictures, for the release of his first book, "Black September To Desert Storm: A Journalist in the Middle East," an independent project.
On the technology front, allies include Microsoft [MSFT], which is working with UPI on a joint technology lab to leverage e-commerce solutions; and Media Exchange International, which distributes UPI content on a pay-per-view basis. (UPI, 800/783-4UPI; Excite, 415/568-6000)