ROBERT R. METZ ’50

ROBERT R. METZ, the former president and C.E.O. of United Media, died Dec. 13, 2015, at age 86. He was a member of Sigma Nu. After beginning his career as a copy boy at The New York Times, he was promoted to the foreign news desk and then worked for five years as a reporter and editor with the International News Service until it merged with United Press in 1958, at which time he became an assistant news editor at the Newspaper Enterprise Association. He went on to become its president in 1972 and then vice president in 1976 of United Feature Syndicate, which merged to form United Media, a licensing and newspaper syndication company that launched and syndicated the Garfield and Dilbert comic strips under his leadership. United Media also syndicated such popular comic strips as Peanuts and distributed hundreds of features, columns, and editorial cartoons. The company’s Pharos Books division also published The World Almanac, among other nonfiction titles, and a subsidiary, TV Data, sold TV listings to newspapers. He led the company into a major international expansion and also established a joint venture that produced children’s animated television programs. In 1992, United Media donated the Robert Roy Metz Collection of more than 83,000 original cartoons by more than 100 cartoonists to Ohio State University’s Cartoon Library and Museum. He retired in 1994. His first marriage, to Beth Blossom, ended in divorce. His wife, Susan Blair Metz survives, as do two sons, a stepson, and three grandchildren.