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Print syndication distributesnews articles,columns,political cartoons,comic strips and other features tonewspapers,magazines andwebsites. The syndicates offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own and/or represent copyrights. Other terms for the service include anewspaper syndicate, apress syndicate, and afeature syndicate.
The syndicate is an agency that offers features from notable journalists and authorities as well as reliable and established cartoonists. It fills a need among smaller weekly and daily newspapers for material that helps them compete with large urban papers, at a much lesser cost than if the client were to purchase the material themselves. Generally, syndicates sell their material to one client in each territory.News agencies differ in that they distribute news articles to all interested parties.
Typical syndicated features areadvice columns (parenting, health, finance, gardening, cooking, etc.),humor columns,editorial opinion,critic's reviews, andgossip columns. Some syndicates specialize in one type of feature, such as comic strips.
A comic strip syndicate functions as an agent forcartoonists and comic strip creators, placing the cartoons and strips in as many newspapers as possible on behalf of the artist. In some cases, the work will be owned by the syndicate as opposed to the creator. A syndicate can annually receive thousands of submissions from which only two or three might be selected for representation.
The leading strip syndicates includeAndrews McMeel Syndication,King Features Syndicate,[1] andCreators Syndicate, with theTribune Content Agency andThe Washington Post Writers Group also in the running.
Syndication of editorial cartoons has an important impact on the form, since cartoons about local issues or politicians are not of interest to the national market.[2] Therefore, an artist who contracts with a syndicate will either be one who already focuses their work on national and global issues, or will shift focus accordingly.
An early version of syndication was practiced in theJournal of Occurrences, a series of newspaper articles published by an anonymous group of "patriots" in 1768–1769 in theNew York Journal and Packet and other newspapers, chronicling the occupation of Boston by the British Army.
According to historianElmo Scott Watson, true print syndication began in 1841 with a two-page supplement produced byNew York Sun publisherMoses Yale Beach and sold to a score of newspapers in the U.S. northeast.[3]
By the end of the Civil War, three syndicates were in operation, selling news items and short fiction pieces. By 1881,Associated Press correspondentHenry Villard was self-syndicating material to theChicago Tribune, theCincinnati Commercial, and theNew York Herald. A few years later, theNew York Sun'sCharles A. Dana formed a syndicate to sell the short stories ofBret Harte andHenry James.
The first full-fledged American newspaper syndicate was theMcClure Newspaper Syndicate, launched in 1884 by publisherS. S. McClure. It was the first successful company of its kind, turning the marketing ofcolumns, book serials (by the likes ofRudyard Kipling andArthur Conan Doyle), and eventuallycomic strips, into a large industry.[4]
Syndication properly took off in 1896 when the competitors theNew York World and theNew York Journal began producingSunday comic pages. The daily comic strip came into practice in 1907, revolutionizing and expanding the syndication business. Syndicates began providing client newspaper withproof sheets of black-and-white line art for the reproduction of strips."[5]
By 1984, 300 syndicates were distributing 10,000 features with combined sales of $100 million a year.[4]
With the 1960s advent of theunderground press, associations like theUnderground Press Syndicate, and later theAssociation of Alternative Newsmedia, worked together to syndicate material — including weekly comic strips — for each other's publications.
Prominent contemporary syndication services include:
IFA-Amsterdam (International Feature Agency) provides news and lifestyle content to publications.Cagle Cartoons offers newspaper editorial cartoons and columns. 3DSyndication comprises syndication service from India, the India Today Group'sSyndications Today, and Times Syndication Service of India.
