Syndicated Creators Branch Into TV, Books

By: Dave Astor When strangers approach Robert Novak at an airport, they mention his TV work 95% of the time. "If they say, 'I love your column,' I feel like hugging and kissing them," jokes the Chicago Sun-Times staffer. Getting recognized as a TV, rather than a newspaper, star is understandable for Novak. His feature may run in about 150 papers, but he's also involved with three CNN shows -- The Capital Gang (as co-executive producer and panelist), Crossfire (co-host), and The Novak Zone (host) -- while appearing occasionally on NBC's Meet the Press as well. The Creators Syndicate writer, who began his thrice-weekly column in 1963 with the late Rowland Evans, also puts out a newsletter, lectures, and has written or co-written five books.

On the cartoon side, one prominent multitasker is Doug Marlette. Besides doing his Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat editorial cartoons and "Kudzu" comic, the Tribune Media Services (TMS) artist wrote The Bridge, an award-winning 2001 novel optioned for a possible Tom Cruise movie, and helped develop the Kudzu musical, which has been staged several times since 1998 and spawned an original-cast CD due out this year.

Welcome to the widening world of syndicated creators who branch out from newspapers. They benefit from added income and exposure, which also helps their syndicates, but there are potential dangers, too, such as getting spread too thin.

One reason for the rise in multitasking is the increase in media seeking personalities and content. "There are so many more outlets -- including cable TV, talk radio, and the Internet," says Creators President Richard S. Newcombe.

"There's more appetite for material," agrees Scott Adams, whose "Dilbert" comic spawned an animated show four years ago on UPN. And The WB, another network that didn't exist before the 1990s, launched a show in 2000 based on the "Baby Blues" strip by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman of King Features Syndicate.

Adams, whose comic goes to more than 2,000 papers via United Media, adds that technology makes it easier to multitask these days. After some initial in-person meetings for the UPN program, he reviewed scripts (via e-mail) and animation (via video) mostly from home.

It's a similar scenario for Steve Moore, who flies from Idaho to Los Angeles only about twice a month. The cartoonist, in conjunction with producer John Carls and Disney TV Animation, creates 15-second shorts for ESPN based on his "In the Bleachers" comic -- which runs in 250-plus papers via Universal Press Syndicate. Moore also created the Metalheads kids' TV show slated to debut this year in the United Kingdom and Germany, and is working with Sony Pictures Animation on a film about animals who start hunting their hunters.

For love and money

Moore tried animation for his own enjoyment, to do something his children would like seeing, and for extra money in an age when syndicated features sell for low prices to a shrinking daily-newspaper base. He now earns about 50% of his income from animation -- a figure that could rise significantly after Metalheads starts, if that show gets picked up by a U.S. network, if the Sony project is completed and comes to movie theaters, and if the ESPN shorts spin off into a half-hour series a la The Simpsons.

"The market has changed," says Moore, who began "In the Bleachers" in 1985 and also worked as a Los Angeles Times editor before leaving the paper in 1996. "It's not like the old days in the '50s and '60s when you got a cartoon in syndication and you could count on that and only that to make enough money to send your kids through college. There aren't as many newspapers and as many competitive newspaper markets today."

"That's the sad truth," observes Mona Charen, whose Op-Ed commentary goes to 200-plus papers via Creators. "I took to heart what [former syndicated columnist] M. Stanton Evans told me when, practically jumping with excitement, I told him I had been taken on by a syndicate. He puffed on his pipe and said, 'Have another source of income.'"

Since Charen's column began in 1987, she appeared for six years on The Capital Gang and Capital Gang Sunday, and she recently completed a book, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.

Creators a creative bunch

A look at the bios of 44 Creators opinion columnists indicates that 24 appear on TV (as hosts or guests), 16 have a radio presence, and 27 have authored books other than column collections. Some are also involved in pursuits such as writing freelance articles, and one -- Ray Hanania -- does stand-up comedy. As a Palestinian American married to a Jewish woman, he has plenty of material.

At least 10 of the 18 Op-Ed columnists syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group (WPWG) have authored books other than column collections. And "quite a number" of the 18, including George Will, are on TV frequently, says WPWG Editorial Director and General Manager Alan Shearer. "It's a good thing," he notes. "It's exposure. It's publicity. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that appearances on the right shows help column sales."

This doesn't apply only to Op-Ed types. For instance, movie critic Roger Ebert of the Sun-Times and Universal obviously has a higher public profile and more column clients because of his TV presence. Being on TV also helps a columnist get speaking engagements, "if you want to do that sort of thing," says Charen. "I've also found that while I love to write, the solitary life of a writer is not always to my taste. Branching out provides more human contact."

The human element works both ways. Newcombe notes that readers may feel a "closer bond" with columnists when they see them on TV.

Adams says doing other things "connects you to life -- or you might be sitting alone in your studio all day." Many syndicated creators, of course, do not work out of a newspaper office. The cartoonist's other activities include authoring half a dozen books other than the more than 20 collections of "Dilbert" comics, owning two California restaurants run by a partner, and founding Scott Adams Foods -- which markets the high-nutrition "Dilberito."

Doing so much means something is always going right, says Adams. "I might be having a bad week with the comic, but all the restaurant seats are filled. It's kind of like distributing your happiness."

Marlette of TMS says different projects exercise different creative muscles. While there are similarities between creative forms -- such as when arranging a scene on stage is like placing characters in a comic-strip panel -- some things work better in a particular medium. "You can get a whole range of emotions in a novel -- the complexities, contradictions, and bittersweetness of life," says Marlette. "That's harder to do in a cartoon. A good cartoon is like a slam dunk. A good novel is the whole basketball program." The 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose novel is about a political cartoonist who returns to the South and discovers his family's history and its involvement in a 1930s strike, adds that he's reaching some noncartoon fans with The Bridge and his musical.

Three other TMS creators with many media irons in the fire are columnists Mitch Albom, Carl Hiaasen, and Cal Thomas. Albom, of the Detroit Free Press, is the author of Tuesdays with Morrie -- the runaway bestseller that recently spawned a theatrical production in New York. Hiaasen, of The Miami Herald, has penned a number of novels and even co-wrote a song, "Basket Case," for Warren Zevon's new CD. Thomas, who's syndicated to more than 550 papers, usually writes his semiweekly column between Sunday and Wednesday, and then starts preparing for his Saturday duties as host of Fox News Channel's After Hours and panelist on FNC's Fox News Watch. "Cranked in between all this," he says, are commentaries for CBS-affiliated WTOP radio in Washington and speaking engagements.

Like Marlette, Ted Rall entered syndication as an editorial cartoonist (now with Universal) and then branched out. His current activities include self-syndicating a weekly Op-Ed column and doing a monthly comic for Men's Health magazine. Rall also did color strips for Time and Fortune magazines, and hosted a talk show on KFI-AM Radio in Los Angeles. And he has authored 10 books, including the just-published Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan.

Why so many projects? Despite having 100 clients, "I can't earn enough drawing editorial cartoons to make a living," replies Rall. "If I had a job working on staff at a paper, I'd probably scale back these other jobs," even though "I like the fact that I have different means of expressing various ideas."

Getting the word out

Other multitasking positives? "The income factor is certainly an incentive and, for those who aren't widely syndicated, TV gives them an opportunity for wider distribution of their ideas and opinions," says Thomas. "For me, it offers more outlets -- not every paper carries every column -- and allows me to meet different people in different venues. Since so many want to be on TV, to be able to engage them there offers additional opportunities for contacts and sources for the column."

Also, politicians and others may be more willing to talk to columnists if they know they're on TV, says Novak. And people who see the non-newspaper work of multitasking creators might check out their columns or cartoons -- thus attracting more readers to print and online newspapers, notes Ann Maloney, president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.

Doing other things also gives syndicated creators more opportunities to "make a difference." Arianna Huffington of TMS tells E&P she uses her column and other projects to express her "outrage at injustice, corruption, unfairness, and the dishonesty of our leaders" -- and "to raise awareness and help have an effect on public opinion."

Huffington's noncolumn work includes authoring nine books, with the latest being the recently released Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America. She also co-founded "The Detroit Project," to get people thinking about how their gas-guzzling SUVs not only affect the environment but increase U.S. dependence on oil from countries involved, directly or indirectly, with terrorism. And she's working on TV projects such as a CBS movie based on her column about how 17% of the African Americans in Tulia, Texas, were rounded up in what she describes as an "extremely dubious" drug raid.

"Not everyone reads," says Huffington, a columnist since 1995. "Many people only get their news from TV."

The downside of diversifying

Are there negatives to branching out? "The only negative, and it has been a minor one, is that one or two people have questioned whether my non-newspaper work has somehow propelled me across the line separating 'commentator' from 'activist,'" replies Huffington. "I don't see why there needs to be such a line. There's a long history of activist journalism." Columnists, of course, have more leeway than reporters in that area.

WPWG's Shearer says it might not be good for columnists to appear on "staged-argument" TV shows that leave little room for nuanced commentary. "Most of the cable shows turn into food fights, so I pick and choose very carefully," adds Ellen Goodman, whose column from The Boston Globe came to WPWG in 1976 and now runs in more than 400 papers. "The nice thing about writing a column is that you can have a layered, thoughtful analysis without 20 interruptions and oversimplifications."

Columnists and cartoonists, of course, can be stretched too thin -- leading to a situation where they might shortchange their newspaper readers. Thomas notes: "There is only so much one can do. I've had to cancel some things this year because of the additional responsibilities of the TV show and my desire to keep the column fresh and interesting."

Rall adds: "It's a lot of work keeping things organized. And there's always the danger of becoming overextended -- doing so many things that you're not good at any one of them."

Goodman has written a couple of noncolumn-collection books and taught at Stanford University for a semester, but, overall, finds the column to be "a full-time job, to put it mildly. ... You do gain a lot by being involved in a different project, but the kind of column I write, on any subject on any given day, requires a whole lot of reporting."

Syndicated writers who originally made their names in other media can be so busy that they might take material from, say, a TV report and rework it slightly for a column, making it less original. Also, not everyone likes the transition from working alone to collaborating. Adams notes that many of the people on Dilbert's TV team were very talented, but he prefers to create solo.

King's Scott recalls that he enjoyed developing Baby Blues scripts alongside accomplished TV wordsmiths. "It was fascinating, like being one of the writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show -- though not quite as cool," he says. But eventually the scripts veered from what he and partner Kirkman wanted as The WB tried to make the program more teen-oriented. The cartoonist also remembers spending at least two exhausting days a week on Baby Blues TV work, being frustrated at how much longer it took to produce an animated show than a newspaper strip, and being disappointed that The WB aired only nine of the 26 episodes that were created.

There was also the possibility of a live-action film based on the King-distributed "Zits" comic by Scott and Jim Borgman, but three scripts didn't pan out. The cartoonists weren't involved with any of them, though Scott would have liked to have given it a shot: "I still believe I can write a good movie myself if I got a chance."

Scott says he, Borgman, and Kirkman -- at least for the time being -- want to concentrate on their families and comics while avoiding outside projects other than collections of their strips. "Our lives are really good," says Scott. "There are other things besides making more money." The three certainly have a good newspaper income and audience, as "Zits" has nearly 1,100 clients and "Baby Blues" more than 850.

First love

How important are newspapers for the creators working for various media? Many columnists realize that newspaper readers often have higher demographics than consumers of other media, says Newcombe, and can be "the movers and shakers of society."

Newspapers may not bring the income and exposure TV can, but Novak is still partial to them. "I consider myself a newspaperman first -- a columnist who does TV," he says.

"My column is key to everything else," adds Huffington. "It's my primary platform; the principal way that I respond to the world. All the other projects flow from the topics I explore and the ideas I express in the column. And the connection I have with the people who read my column is unlike any that I find in other mediums. It's like this engaging, fascinating, and very, very passionate conversation. I absolutely love reading the e-mail I get from my readers."

Thomas says his 19-year-old column is "the center of my journalistic life. I think about it more than any other professional thing I do. Writing for newspapers is real journalism. Broadcast journalism is important, but unless it's about war or crime it rarely holds our attention. Newspapers last."

Yet newspapers aren't as dominant a medium as they were decades ago. Novak notes that "print was king" when he broke into the business during the 1950s -- when power pundits such as Walter Lippmann and James Reston focused almost exclusively on their columns. If those two were alive today, perhaps they would have a capital time with Novak on The Capital Gang.