Andrews McMeel Universal

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 Uclick 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 new media. Every year, the company publishes the work of more than 240 syndicate creators and writers, more than 150 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.