Lee Salem, "Universal Press Syndicate" editor: Mr. Media Interview
Lee Salem is a guy I’ve admired for many, many years. As the president and editor of Universal Press Syndicate, he is the man responsible for recognizing a slew of creative talent that impacted American pop culture over the last 30-plus years. The origins of Garry Trudeau and “Doonesbury,” Gary Larson and “The Far Side,” Bill Watterson and “Calvin and Hobbes,” Lynn Johnston and “For Better or Worse” and Cathy Guisewite and “Cathy,” all can be traced back to the man I’m about to interview.
I had my own up-close and personal moment with Lee Salem. Mr. Media was originally a weekly syndicated column, one distributed by Universal Press Syndicate from July 1996 to May 1998. I remember my first email from Lee, suggesting Universal was interested in distributing the column, which until then had been self-syndicated. He even invited me out to Kansas City, where I met a half-dozen people – including Sue Roush, Bill Mitchell and Darrell Coleman - who I stayed friendly with for many years to come.
And on that trip, seeing how awed I was by whom I was with and my surroundings, Lee jokingly invited me to take a spin in his office chair. Who could resist? Would a political junkie refuse the chance to sit in the President’s chair at the Oval Office? Would a Trekkie turn down the opportunity to take the con from Captain Kirk? It was a pretty cool ride for a guy who dubbed himself “Mr. Media.”
I like Lee a lot and respect him even more. And when I decided to restart Mr. Media as an online feature, Lee Salem was at the top of the list of people I wanted to interview.
BOB ANDELMAN: Lee, thanks for taking the time to do this.
LEE SALEM: I enjoy it.
ANDELMAN: Not a bad introduction, huh?
SALEM: Pretty good.
ANDELMAN: Let’s start by playing a game of first impressions. Tell me what you remember, the first thing you remember about these things that I mentioned, if you would. Let’s start with “Doonesbury.”
SALEM: Well, a slight correction. “Doonesbury” was picked up by the syndicate in 1970, and I started in 1974, but it wasn’t more than a year and a half or two when I started editing Garry. One of my earliest recollections on the bad side was letting the word “missile” to through misspelled, a word I will never misspell again. And on the good side, I started in July of 1974, and the following spring, we nominated him for the Pulitzer for his work in 1974, which mostly focused on Watergate. And that year, he won his Pulitzer, so that was a thrilling time for all of us.
ANDELMAN: All right. And what about “The Far Side”?
SALEM: We had been doing Gary’s books for maybe a year or so, and Gary at that time was with a smaller syndicate, Chronicle Features, and made it clear that he wanted to come over to us, and we had some tough negotiations with his lawyer, and Bob Duffy, who preceded me in the presidency and was then sales director, and I kind of looked at each other wondering about the tough terms of his contract, but it worked out great for everybody, and we had a wonderful run with Gary and still do calendars with him on a regular basis and still remain friends.
ANDELMAN: “Calvin and Hobbes.”
SALEM: Well, Bill is Bill. The somewhat rancorous relationship between the two of us, while occasional, was still public, and he made his feelings clear about the business obligations that we felt and thought that we were asking too much of him and “Calvin and Hobbes” in terms of exposure in the market. We ultimately accepted his arguments and redid his contract, and he retired after a brilliant ten-year run, probably as strong a ten-year run as anyone in comics history, I think.
ANDELMAN: “Cathy."
SALEM: Well, we just celebrated thirty years with “Cathy.” We had a nice dinner with her last fall. When “Cathy” began, everyone was apprehensive. We circulated it in the office before we launched it, and people were saying, what is this, the art and the character? And it is still in well over a thousand papers after thirty years, which, in this market, is quite an accomplishment. I really look on her as a pioneer, and if “Cathy” had not worked the way we hoped it would, I am not sure we would have made the plunge with Lynn Johnston and “For Better or For Worse.” But “Cathy” worked, and it seemed natural to us that the time was right for talented women on a comic page.
ANDELMAN: All right. Well, then, “For Better or For Worse.”
SALEM: Well, that’s a great segue. When we saw Lynn’s work, we loved it. We loved her perspective. In the late ’70s, there was not a great demand for more family strips because the pages seemed to be dominated by them, but what attracted us was the mother’s perspective and the somewhat wry tone she would take on her situation and her husband’s life and children’s lives, and it has proven to be a comic strip that has dominated the surveys in terms of popularity for a long time.
ANDELMAN: And another family strip, “Foxtrot.”
SALEM: It’s a wonder Bill even signed with us. When Jake Morrissey, who was an editor with us, and I first visited Bill out in California, we had breakfast with him and went outside and went to wish him well, and somebody had taken off the bumper on the front of his car, and we had to dash off because we had another appointment. We were in Berkeley, and there was a comics convention then, and we kind of left Bill there. We waved at him and wished him well, and ever since then, I have felt terrible about it, but “Foxtrot” was another case of, answering the question, does the world need another family strip, but the kids were so different, and he was bringing in science, and that occasionally kind of added another perspective to it, and really, until his retirement from the daily portion of “Foxtrot” a couple months ago, I think it was consistently a top ten strip.
ANDELMAN: We just have a couple more. I promise I am not going to take you through the whole list. “The Boondocks.”
SALEM: Well, “The Boondocks,” for a long time we had been looking for a strip by an African-American cartoonist, and nothing really leaped out to us as saying this is a Universal-type strip, and then “The Boondocks” landed on our desks, and one of our editors in Chicago spotted it. He sent in a submission to us about the same time. Everyone had a very similar response that this was a breath of fresh air, and it proved out to be a wonderful strip for us. It didn’t achieve in number as some of the strips we have already mentioned, but in terms of its notoriety, it certainly was a national phenomenon, and he used that to springboard to what we hope will be a successful career in animation in television.
ANDELMAN: “Bloom County.”
SALEM: Not one of ours.
ANDELMAN: I know.
SALEM: But Washington Post Writers’ Group. I have been a long-time admirer of Berke’s work and met him a few times in social situations. I think he tried assiduously to get away from the mantle of being a derivative of “Doonesbury,” and I think to some extent he succeeded, because I think the characters and sensibility developed to be pretty much his own.
ANDELMAN: And the last one, “LIO.”
SALEM: “LIO” is a new strip, has been out less than a year, and it is something different. There is no language in it, it’s all pantomime, which I suspect is very, very difficult to do from the creative standpoint trying to think up a new situation each day using this character as the focal point. It’s a little dark and edgy sometimes though oriented for younger readers, and we have had a terrific launch with it, and it’s approaching 300 papers in less than a year, so we are delighted with it.
ANDELMAN: Oh, is it up that high already?
SALEM: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: I spoke to him a month ago, and it was at 250.
SALEM: Well, it’s at 275 or 280 now. He did benefit somewhat by “Foxtrot” going off the daily pages, but I think we will have a good long run with it.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
I had my own up-close and personal moment with Lee Salem. Mr. Media was originally a weekly syndicated column, one distributed by Universal Press Syndicate from July 1996 to May 1998. I remember my first email from Lee, suggesting Universal was interested in distributing the column, which until then had been self-syndicated. He even invited me out to Kansas City, where I met a half-dozen people – including Sue Roush, Bill Mitchell and Darrell Coleman - who I stayed friendly with for many years to come.
And on that trip, seeing how awed I was by whom I was with and my surroundings, Lee jokingly invited me to take a spin in his office chair. Who could resist? Would a political junkie refuse the chance to sit in the President’s chair at the Oval Office? Would a Trekkie turn down the opportunity to take the con from Captain Kirk? It was a pretty cool ride for a guy who dubbed himself “Mr. Media.”
I like Lee a lot and respect him even more. And when I decided to restart Mr. Media as an online feature, Lee Salem was at the top of the list of people I wanted to interview.
BOB ANDELMAN: Lee, thanks for taking the time to do this.
LEE SALEM: I enjoy it.
ANDELMAN: Not a bad introduction, huh?
SALEM: Pretty good.
ANDELMAN: Let’s start by playing a game of first impressions. Tell me what you remember, the first thing you remember about these things that I mentioned, if you would. Let’s start with “Doonesbury.”
SALEM: Well, a slight correction. “Doonesbury” was picked up by the syndicate in 1970, and I started in 1974, but it wasn’t more than a year and a half or two when I started editing Garry. One of my earliest recollections on the bad side was letting the word “missile” to through misspelled, a word I will never misspell again. And on the good side, I started in July of 1974, and the following spring, we nominated him for the Pulitzer for his work in 1974, which mostly focused on Watergate. And that year, he won his Pulitzer, so that was a thrilling time for all of us.
ANDELMAN: All right. And what about “The Far Side”?
SALEM: We had been doing Gary’s books for maybe a year or so, and Gary at that time was with a smaller syndicate, Chronicle Features, and made it clear that he wanted to come over to us, and we had some tough negotiations with his lawyer, and Bob Duffy, who preceded me in the presidency and was then sales director, and I kind of looked at each other wondering about the tough terms of his contract, but it worked out great for everybody, and we had a wonderful run with Gary and still do calendars with him on a regular basis and still remain friends.
ANDELMAN: “Calvin and Hobbes.”
SALEM: Well, Bill is Bill. The somewhat rancorous relationship between the two of us, while occasional, was still public, and he made his feelings clear about the business obligations that we felt and thought that we were asking too much of him and “Calvin and Hobbes” in terms of exposure in the market. We ultimately accepted his arguments and redid his contract, and he retired after a brilliant ten-year run, probably as strong a ten-year run as anyone in comics history, I think.
ANDELMAN: “Cathy."
SALEM: Well, we just celebrated thirty years with “Cathy.” We had a nice dinner with her last fall. When “Cathy” began, everyone was apprehensive. We circulated it in the office before we launched it, and people were saying, what is this, the art and the character? And it is still in well over a thousand papers after thirty years, which, in this market, is quite an accomplishment. I really look on her as a pioneer, and if “Cathy” had not worked the way we hoped it would, I am not sure we would have made the plunge with Lynn Johnston and “For Better or For Worse.” But “Cathy” worked, and it seemed natural to us that the time was right for talented women on a comic page.
ANDELMAN: All right. Well, then, “For Better or For Worse.”
SALEM: Well, that’s a great segue. When we saw Lynn’s work, we loved it. We loved her perspective. In the late ’70s, there was not a great demand for more family strips because the pages seemed to be dominated by them, but what attracted us was the mother’s perspective and the somewhat wry tone she would take on her situation and her husband’s life and children’s lives, and it has proven to be a comic strip that has dominated the surveys in terms of popularity for a long time.
ANDELMAN: And another family strip, “Foxtrot.”
SALEM: It’s a wonder Bill even signed with us. When Jake Morrissey, who was an editor with us, and I first visited Bill out in California, we had breakfast with him and went outside and went to wish him well, and somebody had taken off the bumper on the front of his car, and we had to dash off because we had another appointment. We were in Berkeley, and there was a comics convention then, and we kind of left Bill there. We waved at him and wished him well, and ever since then, I have felt terrible about it, but “Foxtrot” was another case of, answering the question, does the world need another family strip, but the kids were so different, and he was bringing in science, and that occasionally kind of added another perspective to it, and really, until his retirement from the daily portion of “Foxtrot” a couple months ago, I think it was consistently a top ten strip.
ANDELMAN: We just have a couple more. I promise I am not going to take you through the whole list. “The Boondocks.”
SALEM: Well, “The Boondocks,” for a long time we had been looking for a strip by an African-American cartoonist, and nothing really leaped out to us as saying this is a Universal-type strip, and then “The Boondocks” landed on our desks, and one of our editors in Chicago spotted it. He sent in a submission to us about the same time. Everyone had a very similar response that this was a breath of fresh air, and it proved out to be a wonderful strip for us. It didn’t achieve in number as some of the strips we have already mentioned, but in terms of its notoriety, it certainly was a national phenomenon, and he used that to springboard to what we hope will be a successful career in animation in television.
ANDELMAN: “Bloom County.”
SALEM: Not one of ours.
ANDELMAN: I know.
SALEM: But Washington Post Writers’ Group. I have been a long-time admirer of Berke’s work and met him a few times in social situations. I think he tried assiduously to get away from the mantle of being a derivative of “Doonesbury,” and I think to some extent he succeeded, because I think the characters and sensibility developed to be pretty much his own.
ANDELMAN: And the last one, “LIO.”
SALEM: “LIO” is a new strip, has been out less than a year, and it is something different. There is no language in it, it’s all pantomime, which I suspect is very, very difficult to do from the creative standpoint trying to think up a new situation each day using this character as the focal point. It’s a little dark and edgy sometimes though oriented for younger readers, and we have had a terrific launch with it, and it’s approaching 300 papers in less than a year, so we are delighted with it.
ANDELMAN: Oh, is it up that high already?
SALEM: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: I spoke to him a month ago, and it was at 250.
SALEM: Well, it’s at 275 or 280 now. He did benefit somewhat by “Foxtrot” going off the daily pages, but I think we will have a good long run with it.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Bill Watterson, Cathy Guisewite, Garry Trudeau, Gary Larson, Lee Salem, Lynn Johnston, Universal Press Syndicate
posted by Bob Andelman at
2:28 PM
Seed Newsvine
1 Comments:
Nice interview.
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