19th century The
Tribune was founded by
James Kelly, John E. Wheeler, and Joseph K. C. Forrest, publishing the first edition on June 10, 1847. Numerous changes in ownership and editorship took place over the next eight years. Initially, the
Tribune was not politically affiliated, but tended to support either the
Whig or
Free Soil parties against the
Democrats in elections. By late 1853, it was frequently running
editorials that criticized foreigners and
Roman Catholics. About this time, it also became a strong proponent of
temperance. However
nativist its editorials may have been, it was not until February 10, 1855, that the
Tribune formally affiliated itself with the nativist American or
Know Nothing party, whose candidate
Levi Boone was elected
Mayor of Chicago the following month. Around 1854, part-owner Capt. J. D. Webster, later 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. 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. Under their leadership, the
Tribune distanced itself from the Know Nothings, and became the main Chicago organ of the
Republican Party. However, the paper continued to print anti-Catholic and anti-Irish editorials, in the wake of the massive
famine immigration from Ireland. 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 as
Mayor of Chicago. Between 1858 and 1860, the paper was known as the
Chicago Press & Tribune. On October 25, 1860, it became the
Chicago Daily Tribune. 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. 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.
20th century In the 20th-century, Colonel
Robert R. McCormick, who took 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. 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. 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. The
Tribunes 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
Tribunes East Coast sibling, the New York
Daily News, later established
WPIX television and
FM radio.) The
Tribunes 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. 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
Tribunes June 7, 1942, front-page article implying that the United States had broken Japan's naval code could have resulted in the Japanese learning a closely guarded military secret. The story implying 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. 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. Under McCormick's stewardship, the
Tribune was a champion of
modified spelling for simplicity. Beginning in 1934, the paper compiled lists of dozens of common words whose spelling could be made "saner", removing double L's and shortening "-ogue" endings to "-og", among other changes. In 1939, some of these alternative spellings were abandoned due to unpopularity, such as "crum" for "crumb" and "sherif" for "sheriff", while introducing more prominent changes, such as the words "altho", "tho", "thoro", and "thru", which would become distinctive features of the
Tribune for decades. Most of these simplified spellings were kept until a stylebook update in 1975 adopted ''
Webster's Third'' as the paper's authority on spelling, with an editorial concluding that "we do not want to make any more trouble between Johnny and his teacher." However, a few others, including "cigaret" and "dialog", were kept as late as 1981.
1948 U.S. presidential election "|
Truman was widely expected to lose the 1948 election, and the
Chicago Tribune ran the incorrect headline, "
Dewey Defeats Truman" in its early edition the day after the 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 was a
false article, written by Arthur Sears Henning, which purported to describe West Coast results although written before East Coast election returns were available. 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. In 1969, under the leadership of publisher
Harold Grumhaus and editor
Clayton Kirkpatrick, 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. 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
Tribunes 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
Tribunes editorial as a loss of a longtime 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 one column he wrote, dating to November 23, 1975, 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. After leaving, Soll married
Pam Zekman, a Chicago newspaper (and future TV) reporter. He worked for the short-lived
Chicago Times magazine, by Small Newspaper Group Inc. of
Kankakee, Illinois, 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. In January 1977,
Tribune columnist Will Leonard died at age 64. In March 1978, the
Tribune announced that it hired columnist
Bob Greene from the
Chicago Sun-Times. 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. In May 1983,
Tribune columnist Aaron Gold died at age 45 of complications from
leukemia. 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. In 1986, the
Tribune announced that film critic
Gene Siskel, the
Tribunes 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. 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. Siskel remained in that freelance position until he died in 1999. He was replaced as film critic by
Dave Kehr. In February 1988, Tribune foreign correspondent Jonathan Broder resigned after publishing his article from February 22 that 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. In August 1988,
Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Coakley died at age 41 of complications from
AIDS. 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. Hawley formally resigned from the paper in early 1993, and pleaded guilty in April 1993. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison. In October 1993, the
Tribune fired its longtime military affairs writer, retired Marine David Evans, saying publicly that the position was being replaced by a national security writer. In December 1993, the
Tribunes 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. Horrock, who shortly thereafter left the paper, was replaced by
James Warren, who attracted new attention to the
Tribunes 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. In mid-1995, Holt was replaced as sports editor by Tim Franklin and shifted to a newly created job, customer service editor. In 1994, reporter
Brenda You was fired by the
Tribune after free-lancing for supermarket tabloid newspapers and lending them photographs from the
Tribunes photo library. She later worked for the
National Enquirer and as a producer for
The Jerry Springer Show before committing suicide in November 2005. In April 1994, the
Tribunes 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. Eight months later, Perkins stepped down as TV critic, and he left the paper shortly thereafter. 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. 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. 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. On June 6, 1999, the
Tribune published a first-person travel article from freelance writer Gaby Plattner that described a supposed incident in which a pilot for
Air Zimbabwe who was flying without a copilot inadvertently locked himself out of his cockpit while the plane was flying on
autopilot and as a result needed to use a large ax to chop a hole in the cockpit door. An airline representative wrote a lengthy letter to the paper calling the account "totally untrue, unprofessional and damaging to our airline" and explaining that Air Zimbabwe does not keep axes on its aircraft and never flies without a full crew, and the paper was forced to print a correction stating that Plattner "now says that she passed along a story she had heard as something she had experienced." In early August 2008, managing editor for news
Hanke Gratteau resigned, and several weeks later, managing editor for features
James Warren resigned as well. Both were replaced by
Jane Hirt, who previously had been the editor of the
Tribunes
RedEye tabloid. In July 2000, Tribune outdoors columnist John Husar, who had written about his need for a new liver transplant, died at age 63, just over a week after receiving part of a new liver from a live donor. Tribune's Baltimore Community papers include
Arbutus Times,
Baltimore Messenger,
Catonsville Times,
Columbia Flier,
Howard County Times,
The Jeffersonian,
Laurel Leader,
Lifetimes,
North County News,
Northeast Booster,
Northeast Reporter,
Owings Mills Times, and
Towson Times. The
Howard County Times was named 2010 Newspaper of the Year by the Suburban Newspaper Association. The
Towson Times expands coverage beyond the Towson area and includes Baltimore County government and politics. The
Tribune won five Pulitzer prizes in the first decade of the 21st century. In 2003, editorial writer
Cornelia Grumman snagged the award for editorial writing. In late 2001, sports columnist
Michael Holley announced he was leaving the
Tribune after just two months because he was homesick. He ultimately returned to
The Boston Globe, where he had been working immediately before the
Tribune had hired him. In January 2003,
Mike Downey, formerly of the
Los Angeles Times, was hired as new
Tribune sports columnist. He and colleague Rick Morrissey would write the
In the Wake of the News Column originated by
Ring Lardner. In March 2004, the
Tribune announced that freelance reporter
Uli Schmetzer, who retired from the
Tribune in 2002 after 16 years as a foreign correspondent, had fabricated the name and occupation of a person he had quoted in a story. The paper terminated Schmetzer as a contract reporter and began a review of the 300 stories that Schmetzer had written over the prior three years. In May 2004, the
Tribune revealed that freelance reporter
Mark Falanga was unable to verify some facts that he inserted in a lifestyle-related column that ran on April 18, 2004, about an expensive lunch at a Chicago restaurant—namely, that the restaurant charged $15 for a bottle of water and $35 for a pasta entree. "Upon questioning, the freelance writer indicated the column was based on an amalgam of three restaurants and could not verify the prices," the paper noted. After the correction, the
Tribune stopped using Falanga. In October 2004,
Tribune editor
Ann Marie Lipinski at the last minute spiked a story written for the paper's WomanNews section by freelance reporter
Lisa Bertagnoli titled "You c_nt say that (or can you?)," about a noted
vulgarism. The paper ordered every spare body to go to the
Tribunes printing plant to pull already-printed WomanNews sections containing the story from the October 27 package of preprinted sections in the
Tribune. Discussions ultimately ended, however, after the
Sun-Times threatened to sue for violating Mariotti's noncompete agreement, which was to run until August 2009. In the first decade of the 21st century, the
Tribune had multiple rounds of reductions of staff through layoffs and buyouts as it has coped with the industrywide declines in advertising revenues: • In December 2005, the
Tribune eliminated 28 editorial positions through a combination of buyouts and layoffs, including what were believed to be the first layoffs in the paper's history. Among the reporters who left the paper in that round were Carol Kleiman, Bill Jauss and Connie Lauerman. • In March 2008, the paper gave buyouts to about 25 newsroom employees, including sportswriter
Sam Smith. • On August 15, 2008, the
Tribune laid-off more than 40 newsroom and other editorial employees, including reporters Rick Popely, Ray Quintanilla,
Lew Freedman, Michael Martinez and Robert Manor. • Also in August 2008, about 36 editorial employees took voluntary buyouts or resigned, including well-known bylines like Michael Tackett, Ron Silverman, Timothy McNulty, Ed Sherman, Evan Osnos, Steve Franklin, Maurice Possley, Hanke Gratteau, Chuck Osgood and Skip Myslenski. • On November 12, 2008, five editorial employees in the paper's Washington, D.C. bureau were laid off, including
John Crewdson. • On December 4, 2008, about 11 newsroom employees were laid-off, with one sports columnist,
Mike Downey, having departed several weeks earlier when his contract was not renewed. Well-known bylines who were laid off included Neil Milbert, Stevenson Swanson, Lisa Anderson, Phil Marty, Charles Storch, Courtney Flynn and Deborah Horan. • In February 2009, the
Tribune laid off about 20 editorial employees, including several foreign correspondents, and some feature reporters and editors, although several, including Charles Leroux and Jeff Lyon, technically took buyouts. Among those who were let go were reporters Emily Nunn, Susan Chandler, Christine Spolar and Joel Greenberg. • On April 22, 2009, the paper laid off 53 newsroom employees, including well-known bylines like Patrick Reardon, Melissa Isaacson, Russell Working, Jo Napolitano, Susan Diesenhouse, Beth Botts, Lou Carlozo, Jessica Reaves, Tom Hundley, Alan Artner, Eric Benderoff, James P. Miller, Bob Sakamoto, Terry Bannon and John Mullin. That number was less than the 90 newsroom jobs that Crain's Chicago Business previously had reported were to be eliminated. The
Tribune broke the story on May 29, 2009, that several students had been admitted to the University of Illinois based upon connections or recommendations by the school's Board of Trustees, Chicago politicians, and members of the
Rod Blagojevich administration. Initially denying the existence of a so-called "Category I" admissions program, university President B. Joseph "Joe" White and Chancellor Richard Herman later admitted that there were instances of preferential treatment. Although they claimed the list was short and their role was minor, the
Tribune, in particular, revealed emails through a FOIA finding that White had received a recommendation for a relative of convicted fundraiser
Tony Rezko to be admitted. The Tribune also later posted emails from Herman pushing for underqualified students to be accepted. The
Tribune has since filed suit against the university administration under the
Freedom of Information Act to acquire the names of students benefited by administrative clout and impropriety. On February 8, 2010, the
Chicago Tribune shrank its newspaper's width by an inch. They said that the new format was becoming the industry standard and that there would be minimal content changes. In July 2011, the
Chicago Tribune underwent its first round of layoffs of editorial employees in more than two years, letting go about 20 editors and reporters. Among those let go were DuPage County reporter
Art Barnum, Editorial Board member
Pat Widder and photographer
Dave Pierini. On March 15, 2012, the
Tribune laid off 15 editorial staffers, including security guard
Wendell Smothers (Smothers then died on November 12, 2012). At the same time, the paper gave buyouts to six editorial staffers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter William Mullen, Barbara Mahany and Nancy Reese. In June 2012, the
Tribunes Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic
Julia Keller left the paper to join the faculty of
Ohio University and to pursue a career as a novelist. In September 2012,
Tribune education reporter Joel Hood resigned from the paper to become a real estate broker, City Hall reporter Kristen Mack left the paper to become press secretary for Cook County Board President
Toni Preckwinkle, and the
Tribune hired Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer
John J. Kim from the
Chicago Sun-Times. In October 2012, the
Tribunes science and medicine reporter, Trine Tsouderos, quit to join a public relations firm. Also in October 2012, the
Tribune announced plans to create a paywall for its website, offering digital-only subscriptions at $14.99 per month, starting on November 1, 2012. Seven-day print subscribers would continue to have unlimited online access at no additional charge. In February 2013, the
Tribune agreed to pay a total of $660,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit that had been filed against the paper by 46 current and former reporters of its TribLocal local-news reporting group over unpaid overtime wages. The suit had been filed in federal court on behalf of Carolyn Rusin, who had been a TribLocal staff reporter from July 2010 until October 2011. On the graphic on June 12, the word "Bruins" was ripped off and the comment was added, "Yeah, not right now we're not", in a reference to the
2013 Stanley Cup Finals, which play the
Chicago Blackhawks against the
Boston Bruins. On April 6, 2014, the
Tribune increased the
newsstand price of its Sunday/Thanksgiving Day paper by 50 percent to $2.99 for a single copy. The newsrack price increased $0.75, or 42.9%, to $2.50. By January 2017 the price increased again, up $1 or 40% at newsracks, to $3.50. At newsstands it went up also $1, or 33.3%, to $3.99. On January 28, 2015, metropolitan editor Peter Kendall was named managing editor, replacing Jane Hirt, who had resigned several months earlier. Colin McMahon was named associate editor. On February 18, 2016, the Tribune announced the retirement of editor Gerould Kern and the immediate promotion of the paper's editorial page editor, R. Bruce Dold, to be the Tribune's editor.
2020s On February 27, 2020, the
Tribune announced that publisher and editor Bruce Dold would leave the
Tribune on April 30, 2020, and would step down immediately as editor in chief. His replacement as editor was Colin McMahon. Also, the paper announced that one of the two managing editors of the paper, Peter Kendall, would leave the
Tribune on February 28, 2020. In January 2021, the
Chicago Tribune moved out of
One Prudential Plaza, and relocated their offices and newsroom to Freedom Center. In May 2021, the paper was purchased by Alden Global Capital. Alden immediately launched a round of employee buyouts, reducing the newsroom staff by 25 percent, and the cuts continued. A former reporter said the paper is being "snuffed out, quarter after quarter after quarter". Mitch Pugh was named the
Tribunes executive editor on August 20, 2021, after eight years in the same role at
The Post and Courier in
Charleston, South Carolina. ==Editorial==