United News International
United News International (UNI) gathers, composes and distributes one-minute video news reports on a variety of subjects from around the world. The company is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and operates news desks in Washington, D.C., New York City and Metro Manila.
UNI is a global news agency that generates fact-based reports from newsworthy events around the world and plans to license its continuously updated library to news publishers, news aggregators and web portals. UNI covers the four basic elements of any newsworthy event: who, what, when and where. Each news event is transformed into a self-contained news report available in three formats: Anchored Video, Text and an Audio File all at an internal cost of under $100 per report. These reports do not contain any analysis or opinion, nor do they contain native or sponsored content.
As of July 2017, UNI has a Facebook following of 3.6 million and a global reach exceeding 160 million.
Regulation A+ IPO
UNI's Regulation A-Plus initial public offering was qualified by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on May 26, 2017 with a common STOCK price of $8 per share. The company has applied to list on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “NEWZ”.
UNI plans to expand the number of city desks it operates to major national capital regions around the world, and extend its workflow further to execute an “uberization model” for journalists. In this model, journalists can train up and become a part of UNI's news-gathering and proprietary last mile fact-checking system. When assignment editors decide there’s a news report to verify, an alert will go out to the network to see if there’s capacity to pick up the report anywhere in the world. These “uberized” reporters may be close to the location that a news report is breaking and accept the assignment, capture raw video with their phones and confirm facts in our news format. The “uberized” journalists would be paired with a team at headquarters who will complete and distribute the news report to control quality and accuracy. The “uberized” last mile fact checkers, armed with a smart phone will receive ratings on their news reporting, similar to a way an Uber driver gets reviewed by their customers.
According to the company's Preliminary Offering Circular with the SEC, it is stated:
"We have incurred significant losses since our inception, and we anticipate that we will continue to incur significant losses in the future.
For the year ended December 31, 2016, we reported a net loss of $4,705,624. We expect to continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future, and we expect these losses to increase as we continue to seek to grow our audience and operations. The size and duration of our future losses will depend, in part, on the rate of future growth of our expenses and revenues. In addition, we may encounter unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications, delays and other unknown factors that may adversely affect the timing of our financial and operating expectations. Even if we are able to grow our revenues, this may not occur quickly enough to sustain our operations."
History
The company recently changed its name from NewsBeat Social to United News International; it is the same trusted news source millions around the world have come to rely on everyday.
UNI was launched in February 2013 by entrepreneur Stanley W. Fields. It raised initial funding through angel investors and later announced $4.1 million in private equity funding.