Hugenberg remained at Krupp until 1918, when he set out to build his own business, and during the Great Depression he was able to buy up dozens of local newspapers. Hugenberg's increasing involvement in Pan-German and annexationist causes together with his interest in building a media empire caused him to depart from Krupp, which he found to be a distraction from what really interested him. These newspapers became the basis of his publishing firm, Scherl House, and, after he added controlling interests in Universum Film AG (UFA), Ala-Anzeiger AG, Vera Verlag and the Telegraphen Union, he had a near-monopoly on the German media, which he used to agitate for opposition to the Weimar Republic amongst Germany's middle classes. The most important of Hugenberg's media properties were the "Telegraphen-Union", which played a role in the German media analogous to Reuters's in the United Kingdom and the Associated Press in the United States, employing some 250 journalists in thirty offices around the world to report on national and international news for smaller newspapers in Germany who could not afford national and international correspondents. At the height of its influence, some 1, 600 newspapers in Germany subscribed to the "Telegraphen-Union". Through the "Telegraphen-Union" was described as "non-partisan", its coverage of both national and foreign news tended to be very sympathetic towards right-wing polititical parties opposed to the Weimar republic.