When he and his cousin, Joseph Patterson, took
over the family paper in 1911, McCormick was not
afraid to take on controversial issues, and he used
the Tribune to shape public opinion and policy, often
with an isolationist bent. A frequent target of his
conservative editorials was Franklin D. Roosevelt
and his New Deal policies.

One of the last of the newspaper barons, McCormick tried to make the
Tribune a self-contained operation to the extent of buying its own paper mills.
He attracted readers by his fervent editorials as well as comics, color photos
and features geared toward women. He moved the Tribune to its current
location in the famed Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue in 1925.

A champion of press freedom, McCormick underwrote the cost of winning a
landmark Supreme Court case that found a Minnesota gag law
unconstitutional. The law would have suppressed any newspaper deemed a
public nuisance.

One of McCormick’s many eccentricities was his campaign to simplify the
language, using spellings such as “tho,” “thru,” “iland” and “frate” in the
Tribune. His Chicago home was here at 1519 North Astor Street.