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WORK TITLE: Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast!
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Cohen, Ronald E.
BIRTHDATE: 1937
WEBSITE: http://www.roncohenmemoir.com/
CITY: Potomac
STATE: MD
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 88192884
Personal name heading:
Cohen, Ronald, 1937-
Found in: Gordon, G. Down to the wire, 1989: CIP t.p. (Ronald Cohen)
pub. info. (UPI Inter'l. managing editor)
WW, 1988-89 (Cohen, Ronald Eli; journalist; b. 1/31/37)
================================================================================
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PERSONAL
Born January 31, 1937, New York, NY; married; wife’s name Jill; children: Rachel and Jennifer.
EDUCATION:University of Illinois, B.S., 1959; Columbia University, master’s degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, and editor. News Gazette, Champaign, IL, beginning c. 1959-1961; Connecticut Post, Bridgeport, reporter, 1961; United Press International (UPI), legislative reporter in Hartford, CT, beginning 1961, then manager of UPI’s Montpelier, VT, bureau, beginning 1963, then assistant news editor in New York, 1966-69, then general news editor, 1969-1971, then enterprise editor in Washington, DC, 1972, then news editor, 1973-1983, then managing editor, beginning 1983-86; then executive editor of Gannett News Service, c. 1989-2001; then a syndicated columnist and teacher in Medill News Service’s Washington Program.
Also served as assistant sports editor of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois, 1958-59.
MEMBER:National Press Club, the Gridiron Club.
AWARDS:Cowinner of Best Business Book of the Year, Business Week magazine, and Gold Medal for Journalism History, Society of Professional Journalists, both for Down to the Wire; inducted into the Illini Media Hall of Fame, 2007.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Ron Cohen had a forty-plus year career in journalism. Raised in West Orange, New Jersey, Cohen received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and worked for many years for United Press International (UPI) before being fired in 1986 when he was serving as managing editor and insisted that his staff report on UPI’s bankruptcy. Cohen would go on to work for the Gannett News Service before retiring in 2001. He continued to write, however, as a syndicated columnist.
Cohen’s first book, written with Gregory Gordon, is titled Down to the Wire: UPI’s Fight for Survival and explores the reasons why a respected news service founded in 1907 self-destructed to the point that it almost ceased to exist. Cohen and Gordon, who had also worked at UPI, provide an insider’s look at the intrigue and mismanagement that went on at UPI, as well as the changing face of the news service industry, that almost led to the end of the wire service. The book also recounts both authors’ personal reactions to UPI’s dilemma that ultimately led to Cohen’s firing. Gordon was also later fired after refusing to let UPI review an advance copy of the book.
“Down to the Wire … is anything but an authorized company history,” wrote Los Angeles Times contributor Josh Getlin, adding: “In highly critical language, the authors document how two idealistic but naïve entrepreneurs took over UPI, … drained off millions in company funds and then lost control of the faltering wire service when it was forced into bankruptcy.” New York Times contributor James D. Atwater remarked: “The authors are at their best when they show their love for the company.”
Cohen would not write another book until long after his retirement. In Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir, he traces his life and career as a journalist. Cohen writes about his Italian-Jewish heritage and growing up in new Jersey. “Ancestors, family members, and neighborhood characters come alive in Cohen’s lively episodic prose,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Cohen also informs readers about the many fascinating people he encountered during his long career.
Cohen especially delves into his time at UPI and the events that eventually led to his firing. The book’s title comes from the fact that Cohen addresses his memoir to his two grandchildren. In an interview with Deborah Kalb for the Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb website, Cohen noted that to his grandchildren he “was a hugging-kissing machine who adored them. But they really knew little of me as a person and what I had done professionally, and precious little about our family.” The Kirkus Reviews contributor called the memoir “an affectionate and compelling account of the life of a reporter that is deeply personal and irreverently comic.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Cohen, Ron, Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir, Trafford (Bloomington, IN), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews , September 15, 2017, review of Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir.
WWD, October 1, 1999, “Ron Cohen Exits WWD Posts.”
ONLINE
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (August 24, 2017), Deborah Kalb, “Q&A with Ron Cohen.”
Illini Media, http://illinimedia.org/ (May 27, 2018), author profile.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://articles.latimes.com/ (November 29, 1989), Josh Getlin, review of Down to the Wire.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (December 24, 1989), James D. Atwater, review of Down to the Wire.
Ron Cohen Website, http://www.roncohenmemoir.com (May 27, 2018).
UPI website, https://www.upi.com/ (December 6, 1983), “Ronald E. Cohen Has Been Named Managing Editor of…”
As Managing Editor of United Press International and Executive Editor of Gannett News Service during a 40-year-journalism career, Ron Cohen has been directly responsible for instantly bringing the top headlines every day to hundreds of millions of readers, viewers and listeners in every corner of the globe.
Assassinations, impeachments, terrorist attacks, elections, wars, disasters both natural and man-made — these constitute the 24-hour-a-day breaking news cycle that helped make Cohen one of the world’s most influential journalists.
In these days of political turmoil and allegations of “fake news,” this highly personal book offers a chance to see and feel how it’s been to work in a changing media universe — with constant challenges, excitement and pressure to perform, plus the thrills, satisfaction and frustration that make the news business at once rewarding and exhausting.
Now, shifting gears a bit, Cohen has written “Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir.” It is sweet, humorous, quirky, serious — a sort of written/oral history of his 80 years on Planet Earth.
With this collection of stories, Ron tells you about the fascinating characters he has encountered along his journey, as well about a rich North Jersey Italian-Jewish heritage dating back to the early 20th Century when mixed marriages were rare — and often frowned upon.
The stories aim at his four young grandkids — whom he cannot and simply will not deny “Ice Cream for Breakfast” — in hopes they will get to better know (and remember) a grandfather who is geographically distant if emotionally close.
But it also is for the 70 million grandparents in America and for “kids of all ages” looking for a grin, a sigh, a belly-laugh — even an occasional throat lump.
Cohen’s previous book, “Down to the Wire: UPI’s Fight for Survival” (McGraw-Hill, 1989) was named Best Business Book of the Year by Business Week magazine, and won, among other awards, the coveted Gold Medal for Journalism History from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Cohen holds journalism degrees from the University of Illinois and Columbia University, and is a member of the Illini Media Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife, Jill, in Potomac, MD.
Ronald E. Cohen has been named managing editor of...
Dec. 6, 1983Follow @upi
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WASHINGTON -- Ronald E. Cohen has been named managing editor of United Press International, Editor in Chief Maxwell McCrohon announced Tuesday.
Cohen, 46, replaces Donald U. Reed, who retired.
'Ron Cohen is a thorough professional who is recognized by his peers as one of the pre-eminent editors in Washington,' McCrohon said.
'His experience and expertise will be most valuable as UPI moves into a new period of expansion and improvement of its news services.'
William J. Small, UPI president, said, 'This is a very popular choice. Ron is not only able and respected, but also admired for his spirited support of his people, of UPI and of the highest standards of journalism.'
Cohen was UPI's Washington news editor from March 1973 to June 1983, responsible for UPI's overall coverage of the nation's capital, including breaking news, investigative coverage and enterprise. He was named Washington bureau chief in July.
In May 1978 Cohen was named Outstanding News Editor in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine. This month Washingtonian named him one of the capital's top 50 journalists.
Cohen directed UPI's coverage of the Watergate break-in, the resignation of President Nixon and the primary and general election coverage in 1976 and 1980.
A 1959 graduate of the University of Illinois, Cohen began his news career that year as a reporter for the Champaign, Ill., News Gazette. He went to the Bridgeport, Conn., Post in 1961, joining UPI later that year as a legislative reporter in Hartford, Conn.
Cohen was named manager of UPI's Montpelier, Vt., bureau in 1963 and took a year's leave in 1965 to obtain his master's degree in journalism at Columbia University.
He returned to UPI in New York in 1966, becoming an assistant news editor and in 1969 was appointed a general news editor in charge of the report for afternoon newspapers. He transferred to the Washington bureau as enterprise editor in December 1972.
Cohen was born in New York City and raised in West Orange, N.J. He lives in Potomac, Md., with his wife, Jill, an artist, and daughters Rachel, 16, and Jennifer, 11.
RONALD COHEN
Daily Illini: 1956-59.
Assistant sports editor, 1958-59.
University of Illinois:
B.S. in Journalism, 1959.
Ronald Cohen was in the thick of major American news stories for more than 40 years, but in his case, it was at the break-neck pace of a wire service reporter and editor.
After reporting at The News-Gazette in Champaign and the Bridgeport, Conn., Telegram, Cohen began his wire service career at United Press International in Montpelier, Vt., and then moved to New York City and later Washington, D.C. During his tenure at UPI, Cohen became managing editor of the Washington bureau and was the 1982 runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for directing coverage of the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Washingtonian Magazine twice honored Cohen: in 1982 as One of America’s 50 Most Influential Journalists, and in 1976, as the Best Editor in Washington.
Cohen reported on or supervised coverage for nine presidential campaigns; 18 national political conventions; the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; assassination attempts on Presidents Ford and Reagan; Watergate and the impeachment of Richard Nixon; the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton; the Vietnam and Gulf wars; and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Cohen’s career with UPI ended in 1986 when he was fired for taking a stand and insisting his staff investigate and report on UPI’s tumultuous bankruptcy. Cohen then co-authored the award-winning book, Down to the Wire: UPI’s Fight for Survival. The book was named Business Week Magazine’s Top Business Book of 1989, received the Society of Professional Journalist’s Sigma Delta Chi National Gold Medal for Journalism research in 1989 and the Kappa Alpha Research Award in 1990.
Cohen then became executive editor of Gannett News Service, retiring in 2001 to become a syndicated columnist and teach in Medill News Service’s Washington Program. He is also a member of the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club.
This bio was written at the time of Ron Cohen’s inauguration into the 2007 Illini Media Hall of Fame.
New Yorker magazine once called him “A great big teddy-bear,” and his lap seems a perfect fit for grandkids -- his own, and those he has just met. Ron Cohen, an award-winning journalist for more than 40 years, directed coverage of every major news event from Watergate through 9/11 for United Press International and Gannett News Service. His previous book, “Down to the Wire: UPI’s Fight for Survival,” won numerous awards, including Business Week magazine’s Best Business Book of the Year (1990), and the coveted Gold Medal for Journalism History from the Society of Professional Journalists. Cohen holds journalism degrees from the University of Illinois and Columbia University, and is a member of the Illini Media Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife, Jill, in Potomac, MD.
As Managing Editor of United Press International and Executive Editor of Gannett News Service during a 40-year-journalism career, Ron Cohen has been directly responsible for instantly bringing the top headlines every day to hundreds of millions of readers, viewers and listeners in every corner of the globe.
Assassinations, impeachments, terrorist attacks, elections, wars, disasters both natural and man-made — these constitute the 24-hour-a-day breaking news cycle that helped make Cohen one of the world’s most influential journalists.
In these days of political turmoil and allegations of "fake news," this highly personal book offers a chance to see and feel how it's been to work in a changing media universe — with constant challenges, excitement and pressure to perform, plus the thrills, satisfaction and frustration that make the news business at once rewarding and exhausting.
Now, shifting gears a bit, Cohen has written “Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir.” It is sweet, humorous, quirky, serious — a sort of written/oral history of his 80 years on Planet Earth.
With this collection of stories, Ron tells you about the fascinating characters he has encountered along his journey, as well about a rich North Jersey Italian-Jewish heritage dating back to the early 20th Century when mixed marriages were rare — and often frowned upon.
The stories aim at his four young grandkids — whom he cannot and simply will not deny “Ice Cream for Breakfast” — in hopes they will get to better know (and remember) a grandfather who is geographically distant if emotionally close.
But it also is for the 70 million grandparents in America and for “kids of all ages” looking for a grin, a sigh, a belly-laugh — even an occasional throat lump.
Cohen's previous book, "Down to the Wire: UPI's Fight for Survival" (McGraw-Hill, 1989) was named Best Business Book of the Year by Business Week magazine, and won, among other awards, the coveted Gold Medal for Journalism History from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Q&A with Ron Cohen
Ron Cohen is the author of the new book Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast!: A Journalist's Uncommon Memoir, which he wrote for his grandchildren. Over his 40-year career in journalism, he served as managing editor of United Press International and executive editor of Gannett News Service. He also co-wrote Down to the Wire: UPI's Fight for Survival. He lives in Potomac, Maryland.
Q: At what point did you decide you’d write a memoir for your grandchildren, and how did you decide what to include?
A: After retirement in 2002, I sought a meaningful project where I could continue writing — and it took eight long years to decide on a memoir.
I have four grandchildren under 14, three in Israel and one in California, that I get to see far too infrequently. To them, I was a hugging-kissing machine who adored them. But they really knew little of me as a person and what I had done professionally, and precious little about our family.
I set out to rectify the situation, but by no means is this a children’s book. There are, in fact, 70 million grandparents in America, many of whom are contemplating — as I was — their legacy. I hope “Ice Cream” will inspire some of them to find their own projects.
One thing I knew, though, was that this had to be a 180-turn for me from 40-plus years of journalism’s traditional dispassionate objectivity. The result, Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir, is about as passionate and subjective as you can get.
With no narrative formula in mind, I just began jotting down ideas. I volunteered in January 2010 to house-sit a friend’s cat and her two blind and deaf cocker spaniels in New Harbor, Maine.
I arose early each morning, checked “the list,” chose a topic, and did not stop until late at night when the chapter was “done.” Repeat next morning, and the next. In 30 days I wrote 30 chapters.
Of course, quite a few did not make the final cut, replaced by other, better “memories,” and none of the rest survived in original form. Each chapter went through perhaps 50 rewrites, major and minor, before publication.
Q: How did you choose the book’s title, and what does it signify for you?
A: You know how grandparents spoil grandkids rotten, then return responsibility at day’s end to the hapless parents? Well, that’s me. Someone once said, “If I had known grandkids were so great, I’d have skipped having my own kids and gone right to the fun part.”
Why the title? I thought it would be catchy, a feeling confirmed by many people I consulted during the process. If you don’t capture a potential reader with the title and cover, you have blown your chance.
I suppose I could have employed some other favorite comestible, like “Cold Linguine and Clams” —but c’mon, is there anything cuter than a kid diving into a bowl of ice cream?
Q: Did you need to go back and research any of the stories you recount in the book, or did you remember most of it?
A: Very little research. I found once I got started that my long-term memory was astonishingly good. I did solicit help and confirmation on a few things from friends and family members.
But one great thing about a project like this is that it is “My Memoir” — and my memories! And when you have ascended, by staying above ground and breathing, would you like to be the "young’un" challenging the memory of the “Godfather?”
Q: What’s been the reaction to the book so far?
A: I have been delighted. I have 35 five-star reviews (out of 35) on Amazon already, and most people who have read it are more than enthusiastic in their praise.
I particularly like that they “get it.” I set out to tell stories sweetly nostalgic, a bit humorous and a little self-deprecating. I wanted my enthusiasm for life and my love of family to shine through, and, universally, that's exactly what many readers cite as their take-away.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Every day I think of a new anecdote I wish I had included. I don’t plan an “Ice Cream, Part Deux” — but, luckily, my publisher has provided a wonderful, interactive web site where I can post anything that strikes my fancy, both words and pictures, and readers can talk back to the author. To access it, go to roncohenmemoir.com.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes, one thing. Today’s headlines are fraught with danger and despair, terrorists threatening and delivering, frighteningly inept and incompetent national leaders, a too-large chunk of humanity worrying about day-to-day survival and what kind of world awaits their kids and grandkids.
Permit me to suggest, risking immodesty, that Of Course You Can Have Ice Cream for Breakfast! A Journalist’s Uncommon Memoir offers a “feel good” antidote to modern-day's depressing reality.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Posted by Deborah Kalb at 5:33 AM
Cohen, Ron: OF COURSE YOU CAN HAVE ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST!
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cohen, Ron OF COURSE YOU CAN HAVE ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST! Trafford (Indie Nonfiction) $34.99 6, 15 ISBN: 978-1-4907-8240-9
In this debut memoir, a journalist retraces his steps in the hope that his beloved grandchildren will understand the forces that shaped him. With palpable fondness, Cohen addresses the story of his colorful life directly to his grandchildren, several of whom live too far away for regular contact. In seeking to make his experiences real for them, he offers all of his readers a vivid portrait of a particular segment of 20th-century life. Beginning with his childhood in New Jersey as the son of an Italian mother and a Jewish father, Cohen captures the contradictions of American multiculturalism in his descriptions of his warm, rowdy Italian relatives (complete with a recipe for spaghetti and meatballs) and Jewish grandfather, whose cold silence masks the pain of the Russian pogroms and the loss of his wife to influenza. Ancestors, family members, and neighborhood characters come alive in Cohen's lively episodic prose, as in one scene where a local gangster responds to his "trick or treat" with a box of 48 Hershey bars ("plain, no almonds"). Through it all, Cohen is appealingly self-deprecating as he owns up to his mistakes, including his first job as a Good Humor man, when he cannot resist giving away ice cream to "curly-haired little girls"; a college alcohol binge that results in the death of a friend; and his tendency to nearly get fired on the first day of each of his journalism jobs. Some of Cohen's most intriguing passages describe his career working for newspapers in Illinois and Connecticut and his years at the news service United Press International, where he had an up-close view of pivotal historical and political events while seeking the ever elusive Pulitzer Prize. The book is long and episodic (Cohen suggests early on that audiences may wish to "color outside the lines and select chapters randomly"), and some readers may find his presentation choppy. But the narrative is so warm and exuberant that few should be able to resist it. An affectionate and compelling account of the life of a reporter that is deeply personal and irreverently comic.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Cohen, Ron: OF COURSE YOU CAN HAVE ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST!" Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504217534/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5aff03d7. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504217534
RON COHEN EXITS WWD POSTS
WWD. (Oct. 1, 1999): p2.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Penske Business Media, LLC
http://www.wwd.com/
Full Text:
NEW YORK -- Ron Cohen, the indefatigable city editor and financial editor of WWD, is retiring today after a 43-year career at Fairchild Publications.
The 69-year-old Cohen -- usually the first staffer to reach the office in the morning and often among the last to leave -- joined the company in 1956 as a reporter in the Chicago bureau for Fairchild News Service. Subsequently, he became bureau chief in Kansas City and then St. Louis.
In 1978, Cohen transferred to New York as a retail reporter for WWD. During that period, he also found time to review theater and cabaret performances and to write numerous personality profiles for the newspaper on subjects as diverse as Isaac Bashevis Singer and Lena Horne.
He was named city editor in 1983, quarterbacking WWD's coverage of Seventh Avenue as well as most other subjects found in these pages. In February 1998, he added the duties of financial editor. Successors to those two posts have not yet been named.
Now, Cohen says, he plans to spend more time with his two grandchildren in Kansas City and with his wife, Lynn.
If he ever manages to leave the office.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"RON COHEN EXITS WWD POSTS." WWD, 1 Oct. 1999, p. 2. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A55980906/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9eba39a. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A55980906
The New York Times Archives
DOWN TO THE WIRE UPI's Fight for Survival. By Gregory Gordon and Ronald E. Cohen. Illustrated. 429 pp. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. $19.95.
THE shots were still echoing in Dealey Plaza when Merriman Smith lunged for the radio telephone in the press limousine that was accompanying President John F. Kennedy. ''Bulletin!'' Mr. Smith announced to a United Press International colleague on the other end of the line. ''Three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.''
Then Mr. Smith, the White House correspondent for U.P.I., turned to fight. Jack Bell of The Associated Press was trying to wrestle away the phone. The two men struggled for the link to the outside world as the limousine sped toward the hospital. Mr. Smith kept the phone and continued talking. The result: U.P.I. reported the news of the Kennedy shooting nine minutes after it happened - a major triumph.
In ''Down to the Wire,'' this war story of the press is proudly related by Gregory Gordon and Ronald E. Cohen as a prime example of the enterprise that made U.P.I. one of the great institutions of American journalism. The authors, both U.P.I. veterans, fondly recall other glorious moments when U.P.I. reporters, usually outnumbered, routed the competition and then told the story not only more quickly, but with more style and with more heart.
Regrettably, the theme of their book is not the successes of U.P.I. staffers but the failures of U.P.I. managers that led to the decline, and nearly the fall, of the company. It is an overwhelming story, sad and discouraging, of what the authors call ''decades of management stupidity and cupidity; of neglect, low pay, miserable working conditions; of astonishing lapses in leadership and foresight; of a succession of owners who had exploited Unipressers' love of company and professional pride.''
Continue reading the main story
One of the few generous acts by U.P.I. brass described in the book was the early decision to let Mr. Gordon and Mr. Cohen report to the world, over the company's wire, the bloody details of the knife wielding in its own executive suites. But Mr. Cohen, then U.P.I.'s managing editor, was fired in 1986 during one of the management brawls; the book suggests that a new owner was not pleased with how the company was covering itself. Mr. Gordon, a top reporter, was sacked in May when he refused to turn over the manuscript of this book to management for checking.
Although this account of U.P.I.'s recent years is certainly not very complimentary, the story casts a golden haze over most of its history and some of the great names associated with the news service over the years: William Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Harrison Salisbury, Howard K. Smith, Westbrook Pegler and the redoubtable Helen Thomas, the current senior wire-service correspondent at the White House.
The wire service was founded as the United Press in 1907 by Edward Wyllis Scripps, one of the early press lords. It faced a difficult problem from the start: making money while competing against the A.P., a cooperative formed in 1848 by the nation's newspapers.
To stay alive, U.P. turned the traditional practice of skinflint journalism into an art form. As a young reporter for the service, the authors say, Walter Cronkite was taught by his bureau manager ''how to jiggle two pins through a phone cable to make the connection without having to deposit coins.'' David Brinkley, another alumnus, remarked when the company was foundering: ''I don't know how you could go bankrupt without ever spending anything, but they have managed it.''
In 1958, U.P. got a boost when it merged with Hearst's International News Service to become United Press International, but even that was not enough. Although U.P.I. prided itself on its writers' flair, it could not compete with the more thorough approach of the A.P., which was also enlivening its writing style and broadening its coverage.
Losing millions a year, the E. W. Scripps Company began to try to sell U.P.I. in the early 1980's. There were few serious takers. Reuters, the British news service, made a pass, but in 1982 Scripps ended up dealing with an unlikely pair of entrepreneurs to take over a major news service: Douglas Ruhe and William Geissler, ''complicated young men, a strange blend of idealism, arrogance, anger, bluster,'' in the authors' view.
With little real journalism experience, Mr. Ruhe and Mr. Geissler were the first of an oddly assorted group of entrepreneurs who fought for control of U.P.I. The pair might not have had much experience, but they knew how to make a deal. To get U.P.I. off its hands, Scripps sold the service to them in 1982 for $1, and then tossed in a ''$5 million loan'' that, according to the authors, ''became an outright gift.''
AT this point, the struggle over U.P.I. turned into a free-for-all. There were firings and rehirings; suits and countersuits; fights with unions and fights with lenders. There were ''Downholds,'' the legendary U.P.I. edicts, flashed over the wire, that announced that the company was tightening, if that was possible, the squeeze on spending. Creditors demanded their money. Mr. Ruhe and Mr. Geissler put U.P.I. into debt and, reluctantly, went into bankruptcy in 1984. Mario Vazquez Rana, a furniture magnate turned press mogul, bought the company for $40 million. He fired three presidents, four editors in chief and three managing editors in less than 18 months. He also had lost millions by February 1988, when he sold U.P.I to Infotechnology Inc., a conglomerate with a stake in some 20 high-tech companies, according to the book.
Clearly, the authors believe that the glory days of United Press International are over, that it will never again provide full-service coverage to hundreds of newspapers across the country.
Eager to tell everything about how badly their old company has been treated, Mr. Gordon and Mr. Cohen fire details at the reader in machine gun-like bursts, writing to the beat of the insistent alarm bell on a U.P.I. ticker announcing a bulletin. The chronology is sometimes scrambled, key dates are left out and the story sometimes deteriorates into melodrama: Unipressers ponder the unthinkable; the company reels from burgeoning losses; ''promises flowed like dark beer at Octoberfest.''
The authors are at their best when they show their love for the company: ''If you didn't actually work for UPI, there was no way to fully comprehend the mysterious spell that compelled Unipressers to endure hardship and anguish beyond reason.'' And they lament, with good reason, that ''the rest of the news media seemed strangely unconcerned that the nation's competitive wire-service system was unraveling, that an important alternative voice was being stilled.''
James D. Atwater, a former senior editor at Time magazine, teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.
A version of this review appears in print on December 24, 1989, on Page 7007010 of the National edition with the headline: U.P.I.: Look Back in Sorrow
Following UPI's Fall 'Down to the Wire' : Books: Former staffers document how bad business decisions and a changing news market devastated the once-vital wire service.
November 29, 1989|JOSH GETLIN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
NEW YORK — After about 25 years in the news business, Ron Cohen was used to late-night emergencies and early-morning phone calls. But the message that jarred him awake at 5 a.m. on March 4, 1985, was one he would never forget.
Cohen, managing editor of United Press International, listened in disbelief as an aide told him that the company's two owners had ordered a story to be run on the wire without consulting the news staff. That was unforgivable, Cohen thought, a clear breech of journalistic independence.
But the story itself was even more of a bombshell: Amid rumors that UPI was facing bankruptcy, the company's owners announced that they had abruptly fired President Luis Nogales, a man who was thought to be doing a credible job of rescuing the wire service from financial chaos.
Worse, the owners blandly announced that UPI was turning a profit, even though many employees feared their paychecks would soon begin bouncing. The once-proud wire service--a journalistic institution since 1907--seemed to be spinning out of control.
"I couldn't just let this pass," says Cohen, a normally genial man who was boiling mad when he arrived an hour later in UPI's Washington headquarters. "I decided that if UPI was going down, we were going to cover it as a news story. We, not the owners, were going to write the obituary."
Cohen assigned Greg Gordon, a UPI investigative reporter, to cover the company's financial crisis. In the following months, the wire service's clattering machines spat out a story of incompetence, greed and boardroom treachery that raised eyebrows throughout the media world.
The outspoken coverage showed how UPI--which once fed breaking news from around the globe to hundreds of American newspapers--had come to the brink of fiscal ruin. It also cost both men their jobs.
A new owner who took over UPI in 1985 fired Cohen five months later, in large part, according to Cohen, because of his decision to treat the company's fiscal mess like any other story. Last June, Gordon was fired after he refused to let the owners review an advance copy of "Down to the Wire," an outspoken and highly readable account of UPI's decline that he co-authored with Cohen.
"We had no intention of letting anyone pre-review or censor this book," said Gordon, 39, as he relaxed in a Manhattan hotel coffee shop with Cohen.
"UPI was a great institution and it was a great force worldwide for the free flow of information. But today it's a shell of what it once was, and there's a reason for that. UPI was and is a public trust, and the people who run it ought to be accountable for their actions."
Was the decision to air the company's dirty laundry a wise career move? Cohen, 52, said he and his partner had no other choice, given the story they pieced together with more than 700 interviews and numerous internal documents.
"Down to the Wire" (McGraw-Hill, $19.95) is anything but an authorized company history. In highly critical language, the authors document how two idealistic but naive entrepreneurs took over UPI for no money in 1982, drained off millions in company funds and then lost control of the faltering wire service when it was forced into bankruptcy. Although succeeding owners tried to revive the company, they, too, made costly errors, the authors say.
All the while, shifting economic forces made it more difficult for UPI to sell its services to American newspapers. The emergence of television news, the growth of other wire services and the ability of newspapers to cover far-flung corners of the globe on their own made it harder for UPI to compete with the larger, more established Associated Press.
As a result, Cohen and Gordon say, it would be almost impossible for UPI to regain its former glory.
The world's second-largest wire service, which in 1982 counted more than 1,737 employees, for example, had only 650 staffers last summer, according to the authors. While UPI served more than 800 newspapers in 1982, it had fewer than 200 such clients this year, most of them small publications paying low rates.
Although UPI's new owners are optimistic about turning the company around, they concede that previous corporate blunders have taken a heavy toll. Not surprisingly, they are also concerned by the continuing flap over Gordon's termination and "Down to the Wire."
Milton F. Capps, a UPI spokesman, says the company had no wish to censor the manuscript. But he notes that Gordon was bound by a union contract preventing him from engaging in "outside activity" that constitutes a "conflict of interest" with his duties at UPI.
"We know this as a fact, that this sort of review would be a fairly routine thing, especially given the fact that UPI had earlier cooperated in Gordon's research," Capps says. "It seemed a perfectly fair and equitable request. Because of his refusal . . . he was dismissed."
Cohen and Gordon respond that UPI's new owners refused to be interviewed for their book. Yet, despite their criticism of the new regime, the authors insist that they did not write the book to settle old scores. Both men, who have since found new media jobs, stress that "Down to the Wire" is a cautionary tale.
"The point is that a great news organization fell into disarray," says Cohen. "And the public is entitled to understand why."
Founded in 1907 by the E.W. Scripps newspaper company, the United Press wire service established a tradition of aggressive reporting that made it a worthy rival to the more affluent Associated Press. The company merged with the International News Service to form UPI in 1958.
Despite its smaller staff, the new wire service periodically beat the AP on some of America's most important news stories, including the first urgent reports out of Dallas about the shooting of President John F. Kennedy. And it did so in a crisp, colorful style that, as one reporter observed, was "written for the milkman in Omaha."
Some of journalism's most influential reporters honed their skills working for UPI, including Walter Cronkite, Harrison Salisbury, Helen Thomas, William Shirer, David Brinkley and Eric Sevareid. American newspapers grew to rely on the wire service as a solid alternative to AP coverage, an important "second voice" with which to compare and evaluate stories from around the world.
But UPI's profitability was threatened in the early 1960s by the explosive growth of television news. Suddenly, Americans had an instant news source in their own homes that made a service such as UPI seem obsolete, especially when afternoon newspapers began dying out across the nation. As profits declined, coverage begin shrinking as well, and newspaper editors who could afford only one wire almost always chose the better-funded Associated Press.
Soon, E.W. Scripps officials began to question the value of propping up UPI. In 1981, faced with the need to invest millions in a satellite transmission system, they decided that the wire service had become an economic albatross and began looking for a buyer.
The news sent shock waves through UPI offices across the nation, but reporters and editors believed the company would somehow correct its course. After all, their wire service was the stuff of journalistic legend, something that would live forever.
"We all knew the place was a mess, that money was tight," says Gail Collins, a UPI staffer from 1980 to 1985 who is now a columnist for the New York Daily News. "Still, there was always the hope that some white knight would come riding out of the wings and set things right."
Those hopes were dashed in 1982, when the company was all but handed over to Douglas Ruhe and William Geissler, two young, unknown businessmen from Nashville, Tenn., who put up a token $1 of their own money to gain control of the faltering wire service.
Ruhe, then 38, and Geissler, 36, had virtually no background in journalism except for the fact that they had been trying to acquire low-power television stations across the country. Both had been political activists in the '60s, with experience as civil rights organizers and opponents of the Vietnam War.
The brash young owners pledged that UPI would soon return to its former glory. But it quickly became clear that they had no intention of investing in UPI, even though they had been given $5 million by E.W. Scripps as part of the sale. Unfamiliar with the wire service, they were ill-equipped to deal with its precarious market situation.
"This was the gang that couldn't shoot straight," says Cohen. "Truly, they may have had good intentions at the beginning. But they were in way over their heads. They bit off more than they could chew."
Ruhe, for example, bungled the task of installing a satellite transmission system for UPI, according to the authors. Although an incomplete version of the system was eventually put in place, needless delays cost the company millions in construction and operation.
Soon, UPI began piling up losses of more than $2 million a month. Owners scrambled to meet the payroll and pay their bills by selling off some of the company's valuable assets, such as its renowned photo archives. Eventually, employees were forced to accept 25% pay cuts and the staff was reduced by 20%. Paychecks actually bounced at one point in 1985.
Why were Ruhe and Geissler able to acquire UPI in the first place, when other, more experienced bidders were reportedly interested, such as Los Angeles businessman Peter Ueberroth?
There is no clear answer provided in "Down to the Wire," but the authors speculate that Scripps officials were desperate to unload the wire service by the early 1980s. Although exploratory talks were held with several individuals, Scripps could not find a well-heeled buyer who would take the wire service completely off its hands.
Ruhe and Geissler may have thought they were pulling off a coup, Cohen suggests, but in reality the two may have been "patsies" because Scripps sold them UPI free and clear. According to the terms of sale, the parent company had no liability for future losses, a fact that would haunt the new owners in future years.
Looking back, the key players have varied reactions to that theory.
Reached at his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Geissler said he had not yet read "Down to the Wire" and would have no comment until he did. Asked for his reaction to Cohen and Gordon's arguments, he also declined, saying, "I've been down that route before, and there's no percentage in it."
Toward the end of the book, however, Geissler is quoted in a 1988 interview as saying: "The weight of the evidence is that Ruhe and Geissler were incompetent. They didn't have the ability, the grasp, the intelligence, the skill, the forcefulness to weld it (UPI) together and push it to health."
Ruhe, who lives and works in Nashville, could not be reached for comment.
As for the E.W. Scripps Co., spokesman Rich Boehne said his firm did not care to comment. The decision to unload UPI on Ruhe and Geissler "is documented in the book. We wouldn't be interested in rehashing the history."
Regardless of their qualifications, Ruhe and Geissler realized that UPI was in financial trouble soon after they took over. In 1983, after a string of unsuccessful managers, they hired Luis Nogales, a Los Angeles businessman with media experience, as president. Although the authors credit him with trying to reverse the company's steady decline, it was an almost impossible task.
Unknown to most employees, Ruhe and Geissler had transferred millions of dollars in UPI funds to another media business they controlled, and hired cronies as consultants on projects that rarely bore fruit. There were no reliable records of the company's monthly cash flow, and the owners at one point hit upon the idea of withholding payment of employee taxes from the Internal Revenue Service, according to bankruptcy records.
"Most employees had no idea these things were going on," says former UPI reporter Collins, who covered business news at the time. "But we knew there were terrible problems. Reporters couldn't get simple expenses reimbursed, and there were some who were always fighting with the phone company to keep phone lines working, because the company didn't pay its bills. It was insane."
Early in 1985, Nogales decided that UPI could only survive with new owners and protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws. In what the authors describe as a "crap-shoot mutiny," he and other allies wrested control of the wire service away from Ruhe and Geissler and began searching for a new owner.
Several potential buyers were contacted, but the man who eventually agreed to take over UPI, Mexican press magnate Mario Vasquez-Rana, was no more up for the task of reviving the wire service than his predecessors.
The new owner paid more than $41 million to bring UPI out of bankruptcy. But he angered editors by interfering in their hiring and firing decisions. Unfamiliar with the give and take of newsroom politics, he sacked Nogales and two other presidents, four editors-in-chief and three managing editors in less than three months.
As confidence in UPI plummeted, more newspapers dropped the wire service and the money drain continued. Overall, Vasquez-Rana lost more than $70 million in the venture.
"Down to the Wire" ends shortly after UPI's purchase in 1988 by Dr. Earl Brian, a former California surgeon and venture capitalist with political ties to the Reagan Administration. Cohen and Gordon say that Brian's intention to restructure UPI and diversify its wire service for more specialized customers makes sense, but suggest that it may be too late.
"These are changes that UPI should have been getting into 23 years ago," says Cohen.
Both authors say a key lesson of "Down to the Wire" is that American journalism isn't what it used to be.
Fewer news organizations are run by families these days, Cohen explains, and corporate owners are not likely to support the kind of journalism which, however briefly, enabled UPI to cover its own financial mess.
Should journalists take heart from his experience and cover their bosses like any other news story? The veteran editor shrugs his shoulders.
"I think, unfortunately, it all depends on the management. Maybe we couldn't have gotten away with this at another company.
"But when we first learned of the trouble surfacing in 1985, I said to myself that we had to do this. We had to cover the UPI story. It was the only honorable thing to do."