Uh Oh. TASS is going back to a Soviet-era convention

The Soviet Union's state news agency TASS was once so closely identified with the Kremlin that it reserved a special phrase to use whenever it related official news to the Soviet people.

The phrase was "TASS is authorized to announce," and it prefaced the Kremlin's statements on everything from Cold War diplomatic crises to the progress of economic five-year plans. By stressing the agency's special authorization, TASS -- an acronym for the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union -- maintained that whatever other accounts the Soviet audience might hear or read, this was the only approved, and therefore, accurate one.

Its signature phrase fell out of use when, after the collapse of communism, the state news agency changed its name to ITAR-TASS -- ITAR being an acronym for Information Telegraph Agency of Russia. In the spirit of the changing times, the agency was seeking to emphasize the independence of its reporting, though it remained a state news agency.

But now, ITAR-TASS is again adopting its Soviet-era acronym of simply TASS in a step it says will strengthen its image. The name change is expected to be phased in through the end of the year.