In the early 1920s, Griggs began writing for the
Chicago Evening Post. Griggs interviewed
Al Capone while he was in jail for tax evasion, shared a candy bar with him, and even covered his sister's wedding. While she has often been classified as a "
sob sister,"—she also covered politics extensively. In addition, although fewer than five percent of local coverage in the
Chicago Evening Post had bylines, Griggs had over one thousand bylined stories in her time at the paper; for a span of some years she bylined in a third of the daily papers. By 1932, the
Chicago Evening Post was struggling due to the economic pressures of the depression, and was forced to lay off many of its writers; due to her high profile Griggs was not among them. Although she started out writing various news stories for the paper, in November 1934 Griggs published her first "Dear Mrs. Griggs" advice column, which she would continue to write for over half a century and which would become the mainstay of the
Milwaukee Journal. Originally imagined as help for the lovelorn, in the more than 15,000 "Dear Mrs. Griggs" columns—all signed by "IQG"—she covered a wide range of topics from parenting to why high school classmates who were "wild girls" gained popularity to disability, and gender roles. Specifically, she was awarded the Semi-Sacred Cat Award. The
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee's Department of Journalism now offers the Ione Quinby Griggs Journalism Scholarship. Ione Qinby Griggs died in 1991 at the age of 100. == References ==