Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the Chicago Tribune.
The Sun-Times resulted from the 1948 merger of the Marshall Field III owned Chicago Sun and the Chicago Daily Times newspapers. Journalists at the paper have received eight Pulitzer Prizes, mostly in the 1970s; one recipient was the first film critic to receive the prize, Roger Ebert, who worked at the paper from 1967 until his death in 2013. Long owned by the Marshall Field family, since the 1980s ownership of the paper has changed hands several times, including twice in the late 2010s. In 2022, the paper was acquired by Chicago Public Media—owner of public radio station WBEZ and transitioned to a non-profit model.
History
The Chicago Sun-Times has claimed to be the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city. That claim is based on the 1844 founding of the Chicago Daily Journal, which was also the first newspaper to publish the rumor, now believed false, that a cow owned by Catherine O'Leary was responsible for the Chicago fire of 1871. The Journal, whose West Side building at 17–19 S. Canal was undamaged, gave the Chicago Tribune a temporary home until it could rebuild. Though many of the assets of the Journal were sold to the Chicago Daily News in 1929, its last owner Samuel Emory Thomason also immediately launched the tabloid Chicago Daily Illustrated Times from the same editorial offices of the discontinued Journal.The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun, founded by Marshall Field III on December 4, 1941, and the Chicago Daily Times published from 1929 to 1948. The newspaper was owned by Field Enterprises, controlled by the Marshall Field family, which acquired the afternoon Chicago Daily News in 1959 and launched WFLD television in 1966. When the Daily News ended its run in 1978, much of its staff, including Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko, were moved to the Sun-Times. During the Field period, the newspaper had a populist, progressive character that leaned Democratic but was independent of the city's Democratic establishment. Although the graphic style was urban tabloid, the paper was well regarded for journalistic quality and did not rely on sensational front-page stories. It also typically ran articles from The Washington Post/''Los Angeles Times'' wire service.
1940s, 1950s, and 1960s
Among the most prominent members of the newspaper's staff was cartoonist Jacob Burck, who was hired by the Chicago Times in 1938, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 and continued with the paper after it became the Sun-Times, drawing nearly 10,000 cartoons over a 44-year career.The advice column Ask Ann Landers debuted in 1943. Ann Landers was the pseudonym of staff writer Ruth Crowley, who answered readers' letters until 1955. Eppie Lederer, sister of Dear Abby columnist Abigail van Buren, assumed the role thereafter as Ann Landers.
"Kup's Column", written by Irv Kupcinet, also made its first appearance in 1943.
Jack Olsen joined the Sun-Times as editor-in-chief in 1954, before moving on to Time and Sports Illustrated magazines and authoring true-crime books. Hired as literary editor in 1955 was Hoke Norris, who also covered the civil-rights movement for the Sun-Times.
Jerome Holtzman became a member of the Chicago Sun sports department after first being a copy boy for the Daily News in the 1940s. He and Edgar Munzel, another longtime sportswriter for the paper, both would end up honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Famed for his World War II exploits, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin made the Sun-Times his home base in 1962. The following year, Mauldin drew one of his most renowned illustrations, depicting a mourning statue of Abraham Lincoln after the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Two years out of college, Roger Ebert became a staff writer in 1966, and a year later was named Sun-Timess film critic. He continued in this role for the remainder of his life.
1970s
In 1975, a new sports editor at the Sun-Times, Lewis Grizzard, spiked some columns written by sportswriter Lacy J. Banks and took away a column Banks had been writing, prompting Banks to tell a friend at the Chicago Defender that Grizzard was a racist. After the friend wrote a story about it, Grizzard fired Banks. With that, the editorial employees union intervened, a federal arbitrator ruled for Banks, and 13 months later he got his job back.A 25-part series on the Mirage Tavern, a saloon on Wells Street bought and operated by the Sun-Times in 1977, exposed a pattern of civic corruption and bribery, as city officials were investigated and photographed without their knowledge. The articles received considerable publicity and acclaim, but a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize met resistance from some who believed the Mirage series represented a form of entrapment.
In March 1978, the venerable afternoon publication the Chicago Daily News, sister paper of the Sun-Times, went out of business. The two newspapers shared the same ownership and office building. James F. Hoge, Jr., editor and publisher of the Daily News, assumed the same positions at the Sun-Times, which also retained a number of the Daily Newss editorial personnel.
1980s
In 1980, the Sun-Times hired syndicated TV columnist Gary Deeb away from the rival Chicago Tribune. Deeb then left the Sun-Times in the spring of 1983 to try his hand at TV. He joined Chicago's WLS-TV in September 1983.In July 1981, prominent Sun-Times investigative reporter Pam Zekman, who had been part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team with the Chicago Tribune in 1976, announced she was leaving the Sun-Times to join WBBM-TV in Chicago in August 1981 as chief of its new investigative unit. "Salary wasn't a factor," she told the Tribune. "The station showed a commitment to investigative journalism. It was something I wanted to try."
Pete Souza left the Sun-Times in 1983 to become official White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan until his second term's end in 1989. Souza returned to that position to be the official photographer for President Barack Obama.
Baseball writer Jerome Holtzman defected from the Sun-Times to the Tribune in late 1981, while Mike Downey also left Sun-Times sports in September 1981 to be a columnist at the Detroit Free Press.
In January 1984, noted Sun-Times business reporter James Warren quit to join the rival Chicago Tribune. He became the Tribunes Washington bureau chief and later its managing editor for features.
In 1984, Field Enterprises co-owners, half-brothers Marshall Field V and Ted Field, sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the paper's style changed abruptly to mirror that of its suitemate, the New York Post. Its front pages tended more to the sensational, while its political stance shifted markedly to the right. This was in the era that the Chicago Tribune had begun softening its traditionally staunchly Republican editorial line, blurring the city's clear division between the two newspapers' politics. This shift was made all but official when Mike Royko defected to the Tribune.
Roger Ebert later reflected on the incident with disdain, stating in his blog,
Murdoch sold the paper in 1986 for $145 million in cash in a leveraged buyout to an investor group led by the paper's publisher, Robert E. Page, and the New York investment firm Adler & Shaykin.
In 1984, Roger Simon, who had been a Sun-Times columnist for a decade, quit to join The Baltimore Sun, where he worked until 1995. Simon quit the paper because of Murdoch's purchase of it. Beginning in October 1984, Simon's columns from Baltimore began appearing in the rival Chicago Tribune.
In November 1986, The Sun-Times acquired Star Publications, a chain of 12 south and southwest suburban papers published twice weekly, for an undisclosed sum.
In December 1986, the Sun-Times hired high-profile gossip columnist Michael Sneed away from the rival Chicago Tribune, where she had been co-authoring the Tribunes own "Inc." gossip column with Kathy O'Malley. On December 3, 1986, O'Malley led off the Tribunes "Inc." column with the heading "The Last to Know Dept." and writing, "Dontcha just hate it when you write a gossip column and people think you know all the news about what's going on and your partner gets a new job and your column still has her name on it on the very same day that her new employer announces that she's going to work for him? Yeah, INC. just hates it when that happens."
In February 1987, the popular syndicated advice column Ask Ann Landers left the Sun-Times after 31 years to jump to the rival Chicago Tribune, effective March 15, 1987. The move sparked a nationwide hunt for a new advice columnist for the Sun-Times. After more than 12,000 responses from people aged 4 to 85, the paper ultimately hired two: Jeffrey Zaslow, then a 28-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter, and Diane Crowley, a 47-year-old lawyer, teacher and daughter of Ruth Crowley, who had been the original Ann Landers columnist from 1943 until 1955. Crowley left to return to the practice of law in 1993 and the paper decided not to renew Zaslow's contract in 2001.
By the summer of 1988, Page and Adler & Shaykin managing partner Leonard P. Shaykin had developed a conflict, and in August 1988, Page resigned as publisher and president and sold his interest in the paper to his fellow investors.
In January 1989, the Sun-Times company starts its plans to purchase The Pioneer Press and its 38 different weekly publications.