The Chicago Tribune is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once-integrated WGN radio and WGN television received their call letters. It is the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region, and the sixth-largest newspaper by print circulation in the U.S.
In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the Chicago Tribune became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the then new Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century, under Medill's grandson 'Colonel' Robert R. McCormick, its reputation was that of a crusading newspaper with an outlook that promoted American conservatism and opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Its reporting and commentary reached markets outside of Chicago through family and corporate relationships at the New York Daily News and the Washington Times-Herald. Through much of the 20th century and into the early 21st, it employed a network of overseas news bureaus and foreign correspondents. In the 1960s, its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, began expanding into new markets by buying additional daily papers. In 2008, for the first time in its history, its editorial page endorsed a Democrat, Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, for U.S. president.
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 it would publish in tabloid format for newsstand, news box, and commuter station sales. The change, however, proved unpopular with readers; in August 2011, the Tribune discontinued the tabloid edition, returning to its established broadsheet format through all distribution channels.
The Tribune was owned by parent company Tribune Publishing. In May 2021, Tribune Publishing was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media. Since then, the newspaper's coverage has evolved away from national and international news and toward coverage of Illinois and especially Chicago-area news.
The Tribune settled a lawsuit over illegal charges to consumers in 2013 and was sued again for deceptive billing practices in 2023.
History
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 it 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. Around this time, it also became a strong proponent of the temperance movement. 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.
From 1853 to 1855, 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. and 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 Chicago 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. From 1858 to 1860, the paper was known as the Chicago Press & Tribune. On October 25, 1860, it became the Chicago Daily Tribune.Chicago Daily Tribune, October 25, 1860. 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 afterward.
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.Williams, Gary. Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999: 208. Medill served as mayor of Chicago for one term after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
20th century
In the 20th century, under 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–1950s, it excoriated the Democrats and the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was resolutely disdainful of the British, and expressed support 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 188,000."Robert R. McCormick," Current Biography 1941, pp. 545–547. The young cousins added features such as movie reviews by pioneering film critic Kitty Kelly, 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. 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 James Keeley, the newspaper's managing editor. By 1918, the 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. 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. The same year, the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design competition for its new headquarters, the Tribune Tower, offering a $50,000 prize for first place. The competition worked 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. Construction of the Tribune Tower was completed in 1925.
In 1919, automobile magnate Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune and McCormick for libel after the Tribune called him an "anarchist" in an editorial. The Tribune writer used the term in response to Ford's opposition to President Woodrow Wilson sending military forces to the Mexican border in 1916 and Ford calling soldiers "murderers". The trial lasted over the summer of 1919 and several prominent witnesses were called to testify, including generals and three history professors: Columbia University's William Archibald Dunning, Ohio State University's Francis Coker (who earned his Ph.D. under Dunning), and University of Michigan's Jesse Siddall Reeves. As expert witnesses, the three provided differing definitions of anarchism which, unlike Marxism, had no philosophical "father". In the end, Ford prevailed but the jury only awarded him six cents when he had asked for $1 million.Kastenberg, Joshua E. "Ford is an Anarchist and History is Bunk: William Archibald Dunning and Jesse Siddall Reeves as Precedent for the First Professional Historians Testifying as Expert Witnesses in United States History", 95 Mississippi Law Journal 255 (2026) According to University of New Mexico School of Law professor Joshua Kastenberg, the historians probably did not sway the jury, who were likely more enamored by the testimony of leading military figures and politicians.
The newspaper sponsored a pioneering attempt at Arctic aviation in 1929, a proposed round-trip to Europe across Greenland and Iceland in a Sikorsky amphibious aircraft. However, 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 Tribune 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 East Coast sibling, the New York Daily News, later established WPIX television and FM radio.)
The Tribune 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 U.S. war plans on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. The Tribune June 7, 1942, front-page article implying that the U.S. had broken Japan's naval code could have resulted in the Japanese learning a closely guarded military secret. The story 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."Tribune Adopts Saner Spelling of Many Words", Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1934, front page and Part 1, page 4. 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","Tho, Altho, Thru, Thoro", Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1939, Part 1, page 16. 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