The story
Virgil McNitt (1881–1964) first tried his hand at publishing a magazine, the McNaught Magazine, which failed. He then, in 1910, started the Central Press Association syndication service, with offices in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, McNitt founded the Central Press Association of New York City. (Although both services had the same name, they were separate operations.)
In 1922, McNitt and Charles V. McAdam (1892–1985) absorbed the operations of the New York City Central Press Association and co-founded the McNaught Syndicate, with headquarters in The New York Times building. Will Rogers' weekly column started in 1922 in 25 newspapers. By 1926, his daily column ran in 92 newspapers, and it reached 400 papers three years later, making him one of the best paid and most read columnists of the United States at the time.
From 1925 until 1951, Charles Benedict Driscoll was one of the editors and contributors for the syndicate.
Writers syndicated by McNaught in those first years included Paul Gallico, Dale Carnegie, Walter Winchell and Irvin S. Cobb.
By the early 1930s, the McNaught Syndicate had a stable which included columnists O. O. McIntyre and Al Smith and at one time even syndicated a letter by Albert Einstein.
Other successes included columns by Dale Carnegie and Dear Abby by Abigail Van Buren. At the time of McNitt's death in 1964, the syndicate was still led by McAdam, providing contents to 1,000 newspapers.
By 1987, McNaught had only 24 features left, making it the tenth largest comic strip syndicate in the United States at that time. The syndicate eventually folded in September 1989.
From Wikipedia’s article on McNaught Syndicate, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3