In 1970, Andrews McMeel Universal was founded as
Universal Press Syndicate by Jim Andrews and John McMeel. The two friends, both
graduates of the University of Notre Dame, were encouraged by their wives,
Kathleen Andrews and Susan McMeel, to act on their long-held dream of starting
their own newspaper syndicate.
At the time, Jim Andrews was working in Kansas City as
the managing editor for The National Catholic Reporter, and John McMeel was
based in New York as the assistant general manager and national sales director
for the Publishers-Hall Syndicate.
With an impressive company name and energetic young
owners, Universal Press Syndicate began in a rented house in Leawood,
Kansas—where Kathleen Andrews, as the financial officer, pored over
spreadsheets on the couple's dining-room table while, upstairs, Jim Andrews,
was the editorial department—and in a one-room office on Fifth Avenue in
New York City where John and Susan McMeel were the syndicate's sales and
marketing division.
Garry Trudeau—then a student at Yale—was the
first major talent to be discovered when Jim Andrews read his strip, Bull
Tales, in the Yale Daily News. Trudeau's Pulitzer Prize-winning strip,
Doonesbury, went on to become one of the biggest success stories in
comic-syndication history, and Universal Press Syndicate became a world leader
in newspaper syndication, publishing, production of calendars, gifts and
stationery, and the development of new media.
John and Susan McMeel joined Jim and Kathleen Andrews in
Kansas City in 1975, consolidating publishing and sales operations in America's
heartland. With the purchase of the Catholic publishing house Sheed and Ward,
Andrews and McMeel became the book-publishing arm of Universal Press Syndicate.
As the successful fledgling publishing company grew in stature, Jim Andrews
suddenly died at age 44 in 1980. The unimaginable and unexpected had
happened.In 1997, the privately held company became Andrews McMeel Universal to
reflect its diversification into magazine publishing and new media. Every year,
the company publishes the work of more than 125 syndicate creators and writers,
more than 300 books, and a prestigious line of calendars and gift and
stationery items. Andrews McMeel Universal continues to exert a lasting
influence on American popular culture.
