(from Editor & Publisher, June 28 1924)

What’s What in the Feature Field

“So long as a newspaper syndicate creates and develops new and worthwhile talent, just so long it is useful and helpful to the newspaper world. But its reason for being surely stops there.”

This is the opinion of H.H. McClure, general manager of the Associated Newspapers, New York, who in a recent statement to clients takes up the discussion of syndicate methods by the American Society of Newspaper Editors as contained in Editor & Publisher. 

McClure in this statement expresses himself in accord with the A.S.N.E. findings that “the present day newspaper syndicates, while being of much service, are to be blamed for many evils.”

“Everyone knows,” he declares, “that the original idea and purpose of the newspaper syndicate was to furnish reading and picture material to newspapers in non-conflicting territory at a lower cost than such material would be for one paper alone, or even for a small group of papers. 

 “And everyone in the newspaper business knows that this is no longer done.

“Worthwhile features now cost the newspapers in such cities as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, etc., more than they should cost the entire syndicate list. Proportionately the evil extends to every newspaper buying features,” he maintains.

McClure blames the newspapers mainly for this condition for “permitting the syndicate Frankensteins to create their monsters.”

“There is no doubt but that the feature business would be much improved if some of the ‘oriental price-jackers’ were eliminated, ” he says.

“When a syndicate operates only on the plan of taking established talent away from another organization and making the publisher pay steadily increasing prices for this talent, then it becomes a menace. 

“There are now several syndicates which have not discovered or created a single feature which they are placing — everyone has been ‘bid’ away from some one else, and the newspaper publishers have held the bag. I am not saying that a feature may not be better placed and handled by one organization than another, but I do claim that the so-called better organization ought to do some creative work, in order to acquire merit in the eyes of the publishers.”

[To explain this sour grapes tirade you must understand that Associated Newspapers was not really a syndicate in the traditional sense — it was a cooperative of various newspapers. Due to the structure of their business, Associated was very prone to losing creators to the ‘real’ syndicates. They had little say in how much their features’ creators’ were paid — that was up to individual member papers. So when a feature gained any great popularity it was up to the individual newspaper to outbid a syndicate, which was rarely going to work out in the newspaper’s favour. 

In 1930 Associated Newspapers’ flawed business model finally spelled their doom as a co-op — they were sold off to become an imprint of Bell Syndicate — Allan]