Introducing the Chicago News Cooperative

Chicago was the quintessential twentieth-century newspaper town. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play which premiered in 1928, captured the city's zest for breaking news. Tribune Tower, a monument to Colonel Robert McCormick's vision of his daily as the "World's Greatest Newspaper," was also a buttressed symbol of power. In its pre-World War II heyday, thehad the premiere cadre of foreign correspondents in the country. In later years, New York was the financial and media capital of the nation. Los Angeles had the movie business. Washington had politics and government. Chicago had The Mayorof big-city columnists, the great Mike Royko. With both of its surviving metro newspapers in bankruptcy and local network affiliates' running cut-rate news outfits, this decade has been a harsh comedown for newsgathering on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.