United Feature
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Formerly called
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United Media Enterprises United Feature |
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| Print syndication | |
| Fate | merged into Universal Uclick |
| Founded | 1902 as Newspaper Enterprise Association; began syndicating in 1907 |
| Founder | E. W. Scripps |
| Defunct | 2011 |
| Headquarters | United States, Chicago |
| Services | editorial columns and comic strips |
| Parent | E. W. Scripps Company |
| Divisions | Newspaper Enterprise Association (1902–1978) United Feature Syndicate (1931–1978) |
United Media was a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. It syndicated 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core businesses were the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association. The Newspaper Enterprise Association once presented awards in professional and college football.
E. W. Scripps started his newspaper career in the 1885, and owned 22 newspapers by 1910. In 1897, he created two companies, the Scripps-McRae Press Association and the Scripps News Association. In 1907, he combined a number of news providers into United Press Associations as a rival to Associated Press.
On June 2, 1902, the new Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), based in Cleveland, Ohio, started as a news report service for different Scripps-owned newspapers. It started selling content to non-Scripps owned newspapers in 1907, and by 1909, it became a more general syndicate, offering comics, pictures and features as well. It moved from Cleveland to Chicago in 1915, with an office in San Francisco. NEA rapidly grew and delivered content to 400 newspapers in 1920 and about 700 in 1930. At that time, it had some 100 features available.
United Feature Syndicate was formed in c. 1915. It became a dominant player in the syndication market in the fall of 1931 thanks to Scripps' acquisition of the New York World, which controlled the syndication arms of the Pulitzer company: Press Publishing Corporation and Metropolitan Newspaper Service (which unlike other syndicates were owned by the paper rather than being separate entities). An April 1933 article in Fortune described United Feature as one of the "Big Four" American syndicates (along with King Features Syndicate, Chicago Tribune Syndicate, and the Bell Syndicate). United Features and NEA both became successful distributors of newspaper comics in the 1930s. Boyd Lewis became the executive editor of NEA Service in 1945.
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