Universal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird. In July 2009, Universal Press Syndicate merged with Uclick LLC to form Universal Uclick.
Universal Press Syndicate was founded by John McMeel and Jim Andrews in 1970, two graduates of Notre Dame. Their early syndication success came as a result of Andrews reading the Yale Daily News. While clipping a column by a priest, he was distracted by Garry Trudeau's Bull Tales comic strip on the facing page. When Trudeau's Doonesbury debuted as a daily strip in two dozen newspapers on October 26, 1970, it was the first strip from Universal Press Syndicate, and a Sunday strip was launched March 21, 1971. Circulation of Doonesbury eventually expanded to more than 1,400 newspapers internationally. At first, ownership of the strips was in the hands of both the artist and the syndicate, but beginning in 1990, Universal Press gave them full rights to their respective works.
Read more about Universal Press Syndicate: GoComics, Comic Strips, Columns and Columnists
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or press:
“I have been maintaining that the meaning of the word ‘ought’ and other moral words is such that a person who uses them commits himself thereby to a universal rule. This is the thesis of universalizability.”
—Richard M. Hare (b. 1919)
“If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)