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Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is an American daily newspaper
Chicago Tribune
based in Chicago, Illinois, owned by Tribune Publishing.
Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's
Greatest Newspaper"[2][3] (the slogan from which its
integrated WGN radio and television received their call
letters), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the
Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. In
2022, it had the seventh-highest circulation of any
American newspaper.[1]

In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the Chicago Tribune

became closely associated with the Illinois politician
Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive
wing. In the 20th century, under Medill's grandson Robert
R. McCormick, its reputation was that of a crusading
newspaper with an outlook that promoted American
conservatism and opposed the New Deal. Its reporting
and commentary reached markets outside Chicago
through family and corporate relationships at the New
York Daily News and the Washington Times-Herald. In
the 1960s, its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company,
sought to expand its market. In 2008, for the first time in
its over-a-century-and-a-half history, its editorial page
endorsed a Democrat, Barack Obama, a U.S. Senator from
Illinois, for U.S. president.[4]

Originally published solely as a broadsheet, the Tribune

announced on January 13, 2009, that it would continue
publishing as a broadsheet for home delivery, but would The June 16, 2009 front page
publish in tabloid format for newsstand, news box, and of the Chicago Tribune
commuter station sales.[5] The change, however, proved Type Daily newspaper
unpopular with readers; in August 2011, the Tribune
Format Broadsheet
discontinued the tabloid edition, returning to its
Owner(s) Tribune Publishing
established broadsheet format through all distribution
channels.[6] Founder(s) James Kelly
John E. Wheeler
Joseph K. C. Forrest
Editor-in- Mitch Pugh
chief
General Par Ridder
manager
Opinion Chris Jones
editor

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The Tribune was owned by parent company Tribune Sports editor Amanda Kaschube
Publishing. In May 2021, Tribune Publishing was Photo editor Todd Panagopoulos
acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its
Founded June 10, 1847
media properties through Digital First Media.
Language English

History Headquarters Freedom Center

(Chicago)
Country United States
19th century Circulation 106,156 Average print
The Tribune was founded by James Kelly, John E. circulation[1]
Wheeler, and Joseph K. C. Forrest, publishing the first ISSN 1085-6706 (https://www.
edition on June 10, 1847. Numerous changes in ownership worldcat.org/search?fq=
and editorship took place over the next eight years. x0:jrnl&q=n2:1085-670
Initially, the Tribune was not politically affiliated, but 6) (print)
tended to support either the Whig or Free Soil parties 2165-171X (https://www.
against the Democrats in elections.[7] By late 1853, it was worldcat.org/search?fq=
frequently running editorials that criticized foreigners and x0:jrnl&q=n2:2165-171
Roman Catholics.[8] About this time, it also became a X) (web)
strong proponent of temperance.[9] However nativist its OCLC 7960243 (https://www.w
editorials may have been, it was not until February 10, number orldcat.org/oclc/796024
1855, that the Tribune formally affiliated itself with the 3)
nativist American or Know Nothing party, whose
Website chicagotribune.com (htt
candidate Levi Boone was elected Mayor of Chicago the
p://chicagotribune.com)
following month.[10]
Media of the United States
Around 1854, part-owner Capt. J. D. Webster, later List of newspapers
General Webster and chief of staff at the Battle of Shiloh,
and Charles H. Ray of Galena, Illinois, through Horace Greeley,
convinced Joseph Medill of Cleveland's Leader to become
managing editor.[11][12][13] Ray became editor-in-chief, Medill
became the managing editor, and Alfred Cowles, Sr., brother of
Edwin Cowles, initially was the bookkeeper. Each purchased
one third of the Tribune.[14][15] Under their leadership, the
Tribune distanced itself from the Know Nothings, and became
the main Chicago organ of the Republican Party.[16] However,
the paper continued to print anti-Catholic and anti-Irish
editorials, in the wake of the massive Famine immigration from
Ireland.[17]

The Tribune absorbed three other Chicago publications under

the new editors: the Free West in 1855, the Democratic Press
of William Bross in 1858, and the Chicago Democrat in 1861,
whose editor, John Wentworth, left his position when elected An 1870 advertisement for Chicago
as Mayor of Chicago. Between 1858 and 1860, the paper was Tribune subscriptions
known as the Chicago Press & Tribune. On October 25, 1860, it
became the Chicago Daily Tribune.[18] Before and during the
American Civil War, the new editors strongly supported Abraham Lincoln, whom Medill helped
secure the presidency in 1860, and pushed an abolitionist agenda. The paper remained a force in
Republican politics for years afterwards.
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In 1861, the Tribune published new lyrics by William W. Patton

for the song "John Brown's Body". These rivaled the lyrics
published two months later by Julia Ward Howe. Medill served
as mayor of Chicago for one term after the Great Chicago Fire
of 1871.

The lead editorial in the Chicago

20th century
Tribune following the Great Chicago
In the 20th-century, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, who took Fire
control in the 1920s, the paper was strongly isolationist and
aligned with the Old Right in its coverage of political news and
social trends. It used the motto "The American Paper for
Americans". From the 1930s to the 1950s, it excoriated the
Democrats and the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was
resolutely disdainful of the British and French, and greatly
enthusiastic for Chiang Kai-shek and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

When McCormick assumed the position of co-editor with his

cousin Joseph Medill Patterson in 1910, the Tribune was the
third-best-selling paper among Chicago's eight dailies, with a
circulation of only 188,000.[19] The young cousins added
features such as advice columns and homegrown comic strips
such as Little Orphan Annie and Moon Mullins. They
promoted political crusades, and their first success came with
the ouster of the Republican political boss of Illinois, Sen.
William Lorimer.[19] At the same time, the Tribune competed
with the Hearst paper, the Chicago Examiner, in a circulation
war. By 1914, the cousins succeeded in forcing out William
Keeley, the newspaper's managing editor. By 1918, the Tribune in 1919
Examiner was forced to merge with the Chicago Herald.

In 1919, Patterson left the Tribune and moved to New York City to launch his own newspaper, the
New York Daily News.[19] In a renewed circulation war with Hearst's Herald-Examiner,
McCormick and Hearst ran rival lotteries in 1922. The Tribune won the battle, adding 250,000
readers to its ranks. The same year, the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design
competition for its new headquarters, the Tribune Tower. The competition worked brilliantly as a
publicity stunt, and more than 260 entries were received. The winner was a neo-Gothic design by
New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood.

The newspaper sponsored a pioneering attempt at Arctic aviation in 1929, an attempted round-trip
to Europe across Greenland and Iceland in a Sikorsky amphibious aircraft.[20] But, the aircraft was
destroyed by ice on July 15, 1929, near Ungava Bay at the tip of Labrador, Canada. The crew were
rescued by the Canadian science ship CSS Acadia.[21]

The Tribune 's reputation for innovation extended to radio; it bought an early station, WDAP, in
1924 and renamed it WGN, the station call letters standing for the paper's self-description as the
"World's Greatest Newspaper". WGN Television was launched on April 5, 1948. These broadcast
stations remained Tribune properties for nine decades and were among the oldest
newspaper/broadcasting cross-ownerships in the country. (The Tribune 's East Coast sibling, the
New York Daily News, later established WPIX television and FM radio.)
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The Tribune 's legendary sports editor Arch Ward created the Major League Baseball All-Star Game
in 1933 as part of the city's Century of Progress exposition.

From 1940 to 1943, the paper supplemented its comic strip offerings with The Chicago Tribune
Comic Book, responding to the new success of comic books. At the same time, it launched the more
successful and longer-lasting The Spirit Section, which was also an attempt by newspapers to
compete with the new medium.[22]

Under McCormick's stewardship, the Tribune was a champion of modified spelling for simplicity
(such as spelling "although" as "altho").[23][24] McCormick, a vigorous campaigner for the
Republican Party, died in 1955, just four days before Democratic boss Richard J. Daley was elected
mayor for the first time.

One of the great scoops in Tribune history came when it obtained the text of the Treaty of
Versailles in June 1919. Another was its revelation of United States war plans on the eve of the
Pearl Harbor attack. The Tribune 's June 7, 1942, front page announcement that the United States
had broken Japan's naval code was the revelation by the paper of a closely guarded military
secret.[25] The story revealing that Americans broke the enemy naval codes was not cleared by
censors, and had U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt so enraged that he considered shutting
down the Tribune.[26][27][28][29]

1948 U.S. presidential election

The paper is well known for a mistake it made during the 1948
presidential election. At that time, much of its composing room
staff was on strike. The early returns led editors to believe
(along with many in the country) that the Republican candidate
Thomas Dewey would win. An early edition of the next day's
paper carried the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman", turning
the paper into a collector's item. Democrat Harry S. Truman
won and proudly brandished the newspaper in a famous
picture taken at St. Louis Union Station. Beneath the headline Truman was widely expected to lose
was a false article, written by Arthur Sears Henning, which the 1948 election, and the Chicago
purported to describe West Coast results although written Tribune ran the incorrect headline,
before East Coast election returns were available. "Dewey Defeats Truman".

In 1969, under the leadership of publisher Harold Grumhaus

and editor Clayton Kirkpatrick (1915–2004), the Tribune began reporting from a wider viewpoint.
The paper retained its Republican and conservative perspective in its editorials, but it began to
publish perspectives in wider commentary that represented a spectrum of diverse opinions, while
its news reporting no longer had the conservative slant it had in the McCormick years.

On May 1, 1974, in a major feat of journalism, the Tribune published the complete 246,000-word
text of the Watergate tapes, in a 44-page supplement that hit the streets 24 hours after the
transcripts' release by the Nixon White House. Not only was the Tribune the first newspaper to
publish the transcripts, but it beat the U.S. Government Printing Office's published version, and
made headlines doing so.

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A week later, after studying the transcripts, the paper's editorial board observed that "the high
dedication to grand principles that Americans have a right to expect from a President is missing
from the transcript record." The Tribune 's editors concluded that "nobody of sound mind can read
[the transcripts] and continue to think that Mr. Nixon has upheld the standards and dignity of the
Presidency," and called for Nixon's resignation. The Tribune call for Nixon to resign made news,
reflecting not only the change in the type of conservatism practiced by the paper, but as a
watershed event in terms of Nixon's hopes for survival in office. The White House reportedly
perceived the Tribune 's editorial as a loss of a long-time supporter and as a blow to Nixon's hopes
to weather the scandal.

On December 7, 1975, Kirkpatrick announced in a column on the editorial page that Rick Soll, a
"young and talented columnist" for the paper, whose work had "won a following among many
Tribune readers over the last two years", had resigned from the paper. He had acknowledged that a
November 23, 1975 column he wrote contained verbatim passages written by another columnist in
1967 and later published in a collection. Kirkpatrick did not identify the columnist. The passages in
question, Kirkpatrick wrote, were from a notebook where Soll regularly entered words, phrases
and bits of conversation which he had wished to remember. The paper initially suspended Soll for
a month without pay. Kirkpatrick wrote that further evidence was revealed came out that another
of Soll's columns contained information which he knew was false. At that point, Tribune editors
decided to accept the resignation offered by Soll when the internal investigation began.[30]

After leaving, Soll married Pam Zekman, a Chicago newspaper (and future TV) reporter. He
worked for the short-lived[31][32] Chicago Times magazine,[33] by Small Newspaper Group Inc. of
Kankakee, Illinois,[34] in the late 1980s. Soll was born in 1946, in Chicago, to Marjorie and Jules
Soll. Soll graduated from New Trier High School, received a Bachelor of Arts in 1968 from Colgate
University, and a Master's Degree from Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in
1970.[35][36]

In January 1977, Tribune columnist Will Leonard died at age 64.[37] In March 1978, the Tribune
announced that it hired columnist Bob Greene from the Chicago Sun-Times.[38]

Kirkpatrick stepped down as editor in 1979 and was succeeded by Maxwell McCrohon (1928–
2004), who served as editor until 1981. He was transitioned to a corporate position. McCrohon
held the corporate position until 1983, when he left to become editor-in-chief of the United Press
International. James Squires served as the paper's editor from July 1981 until December 1989.

Jack Fuller served as the Tribune's editor from 1989 until 1993, when he became the president and
chief executive officer of the Chicago Tribune. Howard Tyner served as the Tribune's editor from
1993 until 2001, when he was promoted to vice president/editorial for Tribune Publishing.

The Tribune won 11 Pulitzer prizes during the 1980s and 1990s.[39] Editorial cartoonist Dick
Locher won the award in 1983, and editorial cartoonist Jeff MacNelly won one in 1985. Then,
future editor Jack Fuller won a Pulitzer for editorial writing in 1986. In 1987, reporters Jeff Lyon
and Peter Gorner won a Pulitzer for explanatory reporting, and in 1988, Dean Baquet, William
Gaines and Ann Marie Lipinski won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting. In 1989, Lois Wille won a
Pulitzer for editorial writing and Clarence Page snagged the award for commentary. In 1994, Ron
Kotulak won a Pulitzer for explanatory journalism, while R. Bruce Dold won it for editorial writing.
In 1998, reporter Paul Salopek won a Pulitzer for explanatory writing, and in 1999, architecture
critic Blair Kamin won it for criticism.[39]

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In September 1981, baseball writer Jerome Holtzman was hired by the Tribune after a 38-year
career at the Sun-Times.

In September 1982, the Chicago Tribune opened a new $180 million printing facility, Freedom
Center.[40]

In November 1982, Tribune managing editor William H. "Bill" Jones, who had won a Pulitzer Prize
in 1971, died at age 43 of cardiac arrest as a result of complications from a long battle with
leukemia.[41]

In May 1983, Tribune columnist Aaron Gold died at age 45 of complications from leukemia.[42]
Gold had coauthored the Tribune's "Inc." column with Michael Sneed and prior to that had written
the paper's "Tower Ticker" column.

The Tribune scored a coup in 1984 when it hired popular columnist Mike Royko away from the
rival Sun-Times.[43]

In 1986, the Tribune announced that film critic Gene Siskel, the Tribune 's best-known writer, was
no longer the paper's film critic, and that his position with the paper had shifted from being that of
a full-time film critic to that of a freelance contract writer who was to write about the film industry
for the Sunday paper and also provide capsule film reviews for the paper's entertainment
sections.[44]

The demotion occurred after Siskel and longtime Chicago film critic colleague Roger Ebert decided
to shift the production of their weekly movie review show, then known as At the Movies with Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert and later known as Siskel & Ebert & The Movies from Tribune
Entertainment to The Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Television unit. "He has done a great
job for us," editor James Squires said at the time. "It's a question of how much a person can do
physically. We think you need to be a newspaper person first, and Gene Siskel has always tried to
do that. But there comes a point when a career is so big that you can't do that." Siskel declined to
comment on the new arrangement, but Ebert publicly criticized Siskel's Tribune bosses for
punishing Siskel for taking their television program to a company other than Tribune
Entertainment.[45] Siskel remained in that freelance position until he died in 1999. He was
replaced as film critic by Dave Kehr.[46]

In February 1988, Tribune foreign correspondent Jonathan Broder resigned after a February 22,
1988, Tribune article written by Broder contained a number of sentences and phrases taken,
without attribution, from a column written by another writer, Joel Greenberg, that had been
published 10 days earlier in The Jerusalem Post.[47][48]

In August 1988, Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Coakley died at age 41 of complications from
AIDS.[49]

In November 1992, Tribune associate subject editor Searle "Ed" Hawley was arrested by Chicago
police and charged with seven counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse for allegedly having sex
with three juveniles in his home in Evanston, Illinois.[50] Hawley formally resigned from the paper
in early 1993, and pleaded guilty in April 1993. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison.[51]

In October 1993, the Tribune in October 1993 fired its longtime military affairs writer, retired
Marine David Evans, saying publicly that the position was being replaced by a national security
writer.[52]
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In December 1993, the Tribune 's longtime Washington, D.C. bureau chief, Nicholas Horrock, was
fired after he chose not to attend a meeting that editor Howard Tyner requested of him in
Chicago.[53] Horrock, who shortly thereafter left the paper, was replaced by James Warren, who
attracted new attention to the Tribune 's D.C. bureau through his continued attacks on celebrity
broadcast journalists in Washington.

In December 1993, the Tribune hired Margaret Holt from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as its
assistant managing editor for sports, making her the first female to head a sports department at
any of the nation's 10 largest newspapers.[54] In mid-1995, Holt was replaced as sports editor by
Tim Franklin and shifted to a newly created job, customer service editor.[55]

In 1994, reporter Brenda You was fired by the Tribune after free-lancing for supermarket tabloid
newspapers and lending them photographs from the Tribune 's photo library.[38] She later worked
for the National Enquirer and as a producer for The Jerry Springer Show before committing
suicide in November 2005.[56]

In April 1994, the Tribune 's new television critic, Ken Parish Perkins, wrote an article about then-
WFLD morning news anchor Bob Sirott in which Perkins quoted Sirott as making a statement that
Sirott later denied making. Sirott criticized Perkins on the air, and the Tribune later printed a
correction acknowledging that Sirott had never made that statement.[57] Eight months later,
Perkins stepped down as TV critic, and he left the paper shortly thereafter.[58]

In December 1995, the alternative newsweekly Newcity published a first-person article by the
pseudonymous Clara Hamon (a name mentioned in the play The Front Page) but quickly
identified by Tribune reporters as that of former Tribune reporter Mary Hill that heavily criticized
the paper's one-year residency program. The program brought young journalists in and out of the
paper for one-year stints, seldom resulting in a full-time job. Hill, who wrote for the paper from
1992 until 1993, acknowledged to the Chicago Reader that she had written the diatribe originally
for the Internet, and that the piece eventually was edited for Newcity.[59]

In 1997, the Tribune celebrated its 150th anniversary in part by tapping longtime reporter
Stevenson Swanson to edit the book Chicago Days: 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great
City.

On April 29, 1997, popular columnist Mike Royko died of a brain aneurysm. On September 2, 1997,
the Tribune promoted longtime City Hall reporter John Kass to take Royko's place as the paper's
principal Page Two news columnist.[60]

On June 1, 1997, the Tribune published what ended up becoming a very popular column by Mary
Schmich called "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young", otherwise known as "Wear
Sunscreen" or the "Sunscreen Speech". The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the
successful music single released in 1999, accredited to Baz Luhrmann.

In 1998, reporter Jerry Thomas was fired by the Tribune after he wrote a cover article on boxing
promoter Don King for Emerge magazine at the same time that he was writing a cover article on
King for the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine. The paper decided to fire Thomas—and suspend
his photographer on the Emerge story, Pulitzer Prize-winning Tribune photographer Ovie Carter
for a month—because Thomas did not tell the Tribune about his outside work and also because the
Emerge story wound up appearing in print first.[61]

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