[GreenKeys] Information on UPI's reporting of the assassination of Pres. Kennedy (TTY related)

[gfmurphy at earthlink.net]

Greenkeyers:

I recently came across three articles dealing with UPI's reporting 
of the assassination of President Kennedy.  The first article is
by Prof. Larry Lorenz of Loyola University.  On November 22, 1963,
he was working at the UPI office in Chicago.  The Chicago office
was the headquarters for United Press Radio News.  His group took 
stories from UPI's newspaper 'A' wire and from sports and finance 
wires and re-wrote them for transmission to UPI radio subscribers.
The re-write turned "newspaper style" stories into "rip and read"
stories which were more useful to radio stations.   He describes 
the events that took place that day from his vantage  point.  Here
is the link to his story:

     http://www.loyno.edu/~lorenz/jfk.html

The second story is a much more detailed account of the same events.
Some of the UPI Teletype copy is reproduced and there are notations
describing what is happening on the wire.  There is also an explanation
of how the Teletype circuits worked and how they were split into regional
networks and then joined back into a national network.  Here is the link 
to that story:

http://www.thedownholdproject.info/kennedy-assassination.html


The third story concerns the circumstances that caused UPI to 
beat AP in the race to get the Kennedy story on the wires.  UPI's
reporter, Merriman Smith,  was riding in the first press vehicle
which was 4 cars behind Kennedy's limousine.  The press vehicle
was provided by the phone company and was driven by a telco
employee.  There was a mobile telephone in the car and the
struggle for control of that telephone makes for interesting reading.
Here is the link to that story:

http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=1672

Jerry Murphy