Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily tabloid published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of Wrapports LLC and its Sun-Times Media Group subsidiary.

History
The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city. It began in 1844 as the Chicago Evening Journal (which was the first newspaper to publish the rumor, now believed false, that a cow owned by Catherine O'Leary was responsible for the Chicago fire). The Evening Journal, whose West Side building at 17–19 S. Canal was undamaged, gave the Chicago Tribune a temporary home until it could rebuild. In 1929, the newspaper was relaunched as the Chicago Daily Illustrated Times.

The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun, founded in 1941 by Marshall Field III, and the Chicago Daily Times. The newspaper was owned by Field Enterprises, controlled by the Marshall Field family, which would acquire the afternoon Chicago Daily News in 1959 and launch 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 typically ran articles from the Washington Post/Los Angeles Times wire service.

The 1970s
In 1975, a new sports editor at the Sun-Times, Lewis Grizzard, rejected 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.

The 1980s
On July 17, 1980 the Sun-Times erroneously ran a front-page story proclaiming presidential candidate Ronald Reagan had selected former president Gerald Ford as his running mate. Later that year, the Sun-Times hired syndicated TV columnist Gary Deeb away from the Chicago Tribune. Deeb then left the Sun-Times in the spring of 1983 and moved into television at 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 Tribune in 1976, announced she was leaving the Sun-Times to join WBBM-TV 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."

In January 1984, noted Sun-Times business reporter James Warren quit to join the Tribune. He would go on to become the Tribune Washington bureau chief and later its managing editor for features.

In 1984, Field sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the paper's style changed abruptly toward that of its suitemate New York Post. Its front pages tended more to the sensational, apart from concluding the newspaper's editorial shift to a pro-Republican tendency, which started with the Sun-Times' endorsement of Richard Nixon in the 1968 elections, meanwhile the Trib since the mid-1970's geared towards a moderate stance swinging between liberalism and its more classic conservatism, ending the city's clear division between the two newspapers' politics. This shift was made all but official when Mike Royko defected to the Tribune.

Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert later reflected on the incident with much disdain, stating in his blog, On the first day of Murdoch's ownership, he walked into the newsroom and we all gathered around and he recited the usual blather and rolled up his shirtsleeves and started to lay out a new front page. Well, he was a real newspaperman, give him that. He threw out every meticulous detail of the beautiful design, ordered up big, garish headlines, and gave big play to a story about a North Shore rabbi accused of holding a sex slave. The story turned out to be fatally flawed, but so what? It sold papers. Well, actually, it didn't sell papers. There were hundreds of cancellations. Soon our precious page 3 was defaced by a daily Wingo girl, a pinup in a bikini promoting a cash giveaway. The Sun-Times, which had been placing above the Tribune in lists of the 10 best U.S. newspapers, never took that great step it was poised for.

Murdoch sold the paper in 1986 (to buy its former sister television station WFLD to launch the Fox network) 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 would work 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 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 Tribune's own "Inc." gossip column with Kathy O'Malley. On December 3, 1986, O'Malley led off the Tribune's "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 (commonly known as the "Ann Landers" column and written at that point by Eppie Lederer) 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 at 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. The Sun-Times fired Crowley in September 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.

The 1990s
In mid-1991, veteran crime reporter Art Petacque, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974, left the paper. Almost 10 years later, Dennis Britton, who had been the paper's editor at the time of Petacque's retirement, told the Chicago Reader that Petacque's departure, which was described at the time as a retirement, was involuntary. "I had problems with some of the ways Art pursued his job," Britton told the Reader.

In September 1992, Bill Zwecker joined the Sun-Times as a gossip columnist from the troubled Lerner Newspapers suburban weekly newspaper chain, where had written the VIPeople column.

In September 1992, Sun-Times sports clerk Peter Anding was arrested in the Sun-Times' newsroom and held without bond after confessing to using his position to set up sexual encounters for male high school athletes. Anding was charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and possession of child pornography. In September 1993, Anding pleaded guilty to arranging and videotaping sexual encounters with several teenage boys and fondling others. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In 1993, the Sun-Times fired photographer Bob Black without severance for dozens of unauthorized uses of the company's Federal Express account and outside photo lab, going back more than three years and costing the company more than $1,400. In February 1994, however, Black rejoined the paper's payroll after an arbitrator agreed with the paper's union that dismissal was too severe of a penalty. At the same time, the arbitrator declined to award Black back pay.

In 1993, longtime Sun-Times reporter Larry Weintraub retired after 35 years at the paper. Weintraub had been best known for his "Weintraub's World" column, in which he worked a job and wrote about the experience. Weintraub died in 2001 at age 69.

In February 1994, the Adler & Shaykin investor group sold the Sun-Times to Hollinger International for about $180 million. Hollinger was controlled, indirectly, by Canadian-born businessman Conrad Black. After Black and his associate David Radler were indicted for skimming money from Hollinger International, through retaining noncompete payments from the sale of Hollinger newspapers, they were removed from the board, and Hollinger International was renamed the Sun-Times Media Group.

In 1994, noted reporter M.W. Newman retired from the Sun-Times around the age of 77. Newman, who died of lung cancer in 2001, had been with the Sun-Times since the Chicago Daily News closed in 1978 and had focused his efforts on urban reporting. Among other things, Newman had been known for coining the term "Big John" to describe the John Hancock Center and the expression "Fortress Illini" for the concrete structures and plazas at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

On March 23, 1995, the Sun-Times announced that beginning April 2, 1995, veteran Sports Illustrated writer Rick Telander would be joining the paper and writing four columns a week.

On March 24, 1995, the Sun-Times published an editorial by Mark Hornung, then the Sun-Times' editorial page editor, that plagiarized a Washington Post editorial that had appeared in that paper the day before. Hornung attributed the plagiarism to writer's block, deadline pressures and the demands of other duties. He resigned as editorial page editor, but remained with the paper, shifting to its business side and working first as director of distribution and then as vice president of circulation. In 2002, Hornung became president and publisher of Midwest Suburban Publishing, which was a company owned by then-Sun Times parent company Hollinger International. In June 2004, Hollinger International placed Hornung on administrative leave just two weeks after Hollinger revealed that the paper's sales figures had been inflated for several years. Hornung resigned from the company four days later.

On May 17, 1995, the Sun-Times' food section published a bogus letter from a reader named "Olga Fokyercelf" that Chicago Tribune columnist (and former Sun-Times columnist) Mike Royko called "an imaginative prank" in a column. In that same column, Royko criticized the paper's food writer who edited the readers column at the time, Olivia Wu, for not following better quality control. The Wall Street Journal then tore into Royko with an article of its own, titled, "Has a Curmudgeon Turned Into a Bully? Some Now Think So...Picking on a Food Writer." Although the Sun-Times began hiring a free-lancer to edit the space and look for double entendres, another one made it into the same column on July 26, 1995, when the section published a letter from a "Phil McCraken." "This one was a little more subtle," a reporter outside the food department told the Chicago Reader.

From September 1996 until May 2000, fictional editions of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper were prominently featured in the CBS television series Early Edition. The series followed the adventures of a man who mysteriously receives each Sun-Times the day before it is actually published, and who uses this knowledge to prevent terrible events each day.

In 1998, the Sun-Times demoted longtime TV critic Lon Grahnke, shifting him to covering education. Grahnke, who died in 2006 at age 56 of Alzheimer's disease, remained with the paper until 2001, when he retired following an extended medical leave.

In 1999, longtime Sun-Times columnist Ray Coffey retired around the age of 70. He died in 2008.

The 2000s
In 2000, the Sun-Times' new editors, Michael Cooke and John Cruickshank, tapped longtime staff reporter Mark Brown, who had considered himself an investigative reporter, to write a column that would anchor page two of the paper.

In 2000, longtime investigative reporter Charles Nicodemus retired from the paper at age 69. He died in 2008 at age 77.

In 2001, Sun-Times investigative reporter Chuck Neubauer quit the paper to join the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau. Neubauer and Brown had initiated the investigation into U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski that uncovered a variety of misdeeds that ultimately had led to Rostenkowski's indictment, conviction and imprisonment.

In April 2001, Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey quit to join the administration of then-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley as Daley's deputy mayoral chief of staff, responsible for downtown planning, rewriting the city's zoning code and affordable housing issues.

In April 2001, longtime Sun-Times horse-racing writer Dave Feldman died at age 85 while still on the Sun-Times' payroll.

In 2002, with Kuczmarski & Associates, the Chicago Sun-Times co-founded the Chicago Innovation Awards.

In May 2002, Sun-Times editors Joycelyn Winnecke and Bill Adee, who were at the time husband and wife, both quit on the same day to join the rival Chicago Tribune. Winnecke had been the Sun-Times managing editor, and she left for a new post, associate managing editor for national news, while Adee, who had been the Sun-Times sports editor for nine years, became the Tribune sports editor/news.

In April 2003, the Sun-Times picked up the comic strip Beetle Bailey after the rival Chicago Tribune dropped it in June 2002 and gave up the rights to it in February 2003. The Sun-Times celebrated the arrival of Beetle Bailey with a page-one announcement.

In October 2003, famed Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet began including the name of his longtime assistant of nearly 34 years, Stella Foster, as the coauthor of his column. After Kupcinet died the following month at age 91, the Sun-Times kept Foster on and gave her the sole byline on the column, which now is known as "Stella's Column."

In 2004, the Sun-Times was censured by the Audit Bureau of Circulations for misrepresenting its circulation figures.

In February 2004, longtime Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal died at his home in Hinsdale, Illinois, at age 54 of an apparent suicide.

In August 2004, longtime Chicago broadcast journalist Carol Marin began writing regular columns in the Sun-Times, mostly on political issues.

On September 28, 2005, Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested in his home in Northbrook, Illinois, and charged with domestic battery and with interfering with the reporting of domestic battery. With that, Steinberg, who had been at the Sun-Times since 1987, entered a treatment facility for alcohol abuse. On November 23, 2005, Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges against Steinberg after his wife said she no longer feared for her safety. On November 28, 2005, Steinberg returned to the Sun-Times' pages after going through a 28-day rehabilitation program at a nearby hospital, and he gave readers his version of the events that led to his arrest: "I got drunk and slapped my wife during an argument." Steinberg also reported that he and his wife were "on the mend," and that he was working toward sobriety.

In the spring of 2006, a variety of longtime Sun-Times writers and columnists took buyouts, including sports columnist Ron Rapoport, sports reporter Joe Goddard, society and gardening columnist Mary Cameron Frey, book editor Henry Kisor, page designer Roy Moody and photographer Bob Black. Classical music critic Wynne Delacoma also took a buyout, and left the paper later.

In August 2006, the Sun-Times fired longtime Chicago Cubs beat writer Mike Kiley. Then-Sun-Times sports editor Stu Courtney told the Tribune that the dismissal of Kiley, who had joined the Sun-Times from the Tribune in 1996, was a "personnel matter I can't comment on." The Tribune Teddy Greenstein called Kiley "a fierce competitor."

In September 2006, longtime Sun-Times environment reporter Gary Wisby retired as part of the same group of writers who were offered and accepted buyouts in the spring of 2006.

In February 2007, noted Sun-Times columnist Debra Pickett quit upon returning from maternity leave. The reasons for her departure were differences with her editors over where her column appeared and the sorts of assignments being handed to her.

On July 10, 2007, the paper announced: "We [the Chicago Sun-Times editorial page] are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune—that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue."

In January 2008, the Sun-Times underwent two rounds of layoffs. In its first round, the Sun-Times fired editorial board members Michael Gillis, Michelle Stevens and Lloyd Sachs, along with Sunday editor Marcia Frellick and assistant managing editor Avis Weathersbee.

About two weeks later, the Sun-Times underwent more staff reductions, laying off columnist Esther Cepeda, religion reporter Susan Hogan/Albach, TV critic Doug Elfman and onetime editor Garry Steckles, while giving buyouts to assistant city editors Robert C. Herguth and Nancy Moffett, environmental reporter Jim Ritter, copy editors Chris Whitehead and Bob Mutter, editorial columnist Steve Huntley (who remains with the paper now as a free-lance columnist), and special Barack Obama correspondent Jennifer Hunter. Also taking a buyout was longtime health and technology reporter Howard Wolinsky. Two other staffers, business editor Dan Miller and deputy metro editor Phyllis Gilchrist, resigned. Reporter Kara Spak initially was reported to have been laid off, but she wound up staying with the paper.

In August 2008, high-profile sports columnist Jay Mariotti resigned from the Sun-Times after concluding that the future of sports journalism was online. Mariotti later joined ESPN.

In October 2008, the Sun-Times gave buyouts to noted TV/radio writer Robert Feder (now a blogger with Time Out Chicago) and longtime auto writer Dan Jedlicka. The paper also laid off two members of its editorial board: Teresa Puente and Deborah Douglas.

In November 2008, the Sun-Times dropped its "Quick Takes" column, which Sun-Times columnist Zay N. Smith had written since 1995. Smith wrote the column from home, and the Sun-Times discontinued the column and informed Smith that it needed him back in the newsroom as a general assignment reporter. The paper's union complained, noting that Smith had permanent physical disabilities that made it difficult for him to be mobile. Smith later left the paper.

In March 2009, sports columnist Greg Couch left the Sun-Times after 12 years to join AOL Sports.

On March 31, 2009, the newspaper filed for bankruptcy protection.

On October 9, 2009 the Sun Times unions agreed to concessions paving the way for Jim Tyree and a group of investors including Rocky Wirtz and Robert J. Parrillo to buy the newspaper and its 50 suburban newspapers. Of the $25 million purchase price, $5 million was in cash, with the other $20 million to help pay off past debts.

In November 2009, Sun-Times sports editor Stu Courtney quit to join the rival Chicago Tribune Chicago Breaking Sports website.

In December 2009, the Sun-Times hired sports columnist Rick Morrissey away from the rival Chicago Tribune.

The 2010s
In April 2010, longtime Sun-Times pop music critic Jim DeRogatis resigned from the paper to join the faculty of Columbia College Chicago and to begin blogging at Vocalo.org.

In June 2010, the Sun-Times laid off a group of editorial employees, including longtime sports media columnist Jim O'Donnell and features writer Delia O'Hara.

At the end of June 2010, longtime Sun-Times sportswriter Len Ziehm, who covered many sports but largely focused on golf, retired after 41 years at the paper.

In October 2010, the Sun-Times laid off longtime sports columnist Carol Slezak, who by that point had shifted to feature reporting.

Sun-Times Media group chairman James C. Tyree died under sudden circumstances in March 2011. Jeremy Halbreich, chief executive, said that Tyree’s will be greatly missed and that his death will make no changes in the media company’s strategy.

Also in March 2011, the Sun-Times laid off six editorial reporters and writers: high school sports reporter Steve Tucker, reporter Misha Davenport, general assignment reporter Cheryl Jackson, media and marketing columnist Lewis Lazare, feature writer Celeste Busk and sportswriter John Jackson.

In May 2011, the Sun-Times laid off real estate writer Bill Cunniff, features reporter Jeff Johnson and gaming writer John Grochowski, along with graphic designer Char Searl.

In June 2011, the Sun-Times fired longtime TV critic Paige Wiser after she admitted to fabricating portions of a review of a Glee Live! In Concert! performance. She admitted to attending much of the concert but leaving early to tend to her children. The paper eventually tapped longtime travel writer Lori Rackl to replace Wiser as TV critic.

The Sun-Times announced in July 2011 that it would close its printing plant on Ashland Avenue in Chicago—eliminating 400 printing jobs—and would outsource the printing of the newspaper to the rival Chicago Tribune. The move was estimated to save $10 million a year. The Sun-Times already had been distributed by the Tribune since 2007.

In August 2011, the Sun-Times laid off three more reporters and writers: sportswriter Mike Mulligan, "Quick Hits" sports columnist Elliott Harris and photographer Keith Hale.

In September 2011, the Sun-Times fired longtime restaurant reviewer (and free-lancer) Pat Bruno.

In October 2011, the Sun-Times discontinued the longtime comic strip Drabble, which the paper had run since the strip's inception in 1979. The comic strip was the victim of the paper's reduced page size.

In November 2011, Sun-Times food editor Janet Rausa Fuller resigned to spend more time with her family.

On December 5, 2011, the Sun-Times laid off more editorial staff, including longtime feature writer Mary Houlihan.

On December 6, 2011, the Sun-Times announced that it would begin using an online paywall as of December 8, 2011, after readers enjoyed a certain number of visits. The paper decided not to have star film critic Roger Ebert's work subject to the paywall, however.

Awards and notable stories
The paper has won eight Pulitzer Prizes.

1970: Tom Fitzpatrick, General Reporting

1971: Jack Dykinga, Feature Photography

1973: Ron Powers, Criticism

1974: Art Petacque, Hugh Hough, General Reporting

1975: Roger Ebert, Criticism

1982: John H. White, Feature Photography

1989: Jack Higgins, Editorial Cartooning

2011: Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim, Local Reporting

Doug Moench was nominated for a Chicago Newspaper Guild Award in 1972 for his stream-of-consciousness story on violence in the Chicago subway system. In 1978, the newspaper conducted the Mirage Tavern investigation, in which undercover reporters operated a bar and caught city officials taking bribes on camera.

In January 2004, after a six-month investigation led by Tim Novak and Steve Warmbir, the paper broke the story of the Hired Truck Program scandal. After a Sun-Times article by Michael Sneed erroneously identified the perpetrator of the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre as an unnamed Chinese national, the People's Republic of China criticized the Chicago Sun-Times for publishing what it called "irresponsible reports." The newspaper later silently withdrew the story without making any apologies or excuses.

Staff
The Sun-Times' best-known writer is film critic Roger Ebert. Chicago columnist Mike Royko, previously of the defunct Chicago Daily News, came to the paper in 1978 but left for the Chicago Tribune in 1984 when the Sun-Times was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Irv Kupcinet's daily column was a fixture from 1943 until his death in 2003. It was also the home base for many years of advice columnist Ann Landers and the late Washington veteran Robert Novak for many years.

The newspaper gave a start in journalism to columnist Bob Greene. Other Sun-Times writers of note include Mary Mitchell, Richard Roeper, Michael Sneed, Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg, sportswriter Rick Telander, theater critic Hedy Weiss, Carol Marin, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Frank Main and Mark Konkol,  and technology expert Andy Ihnatko. Lynn Sweet is the Washington Bureau Chief.

John Cruickshank became the publisher in 2003 after David Radler, and on September 19, 2007 announced he was resigning to head the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news division.