Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [44]
There was Richard J. Finnegan, the great editor whom I remember warmly for the personal help and inspiration he gave me when I first joined the Times. No editor pursued stories with greater drive than Finnegan, and few weighed the news value of a story as seriously as he did against the harm it might do. I’ll never forget the time a reporter rushed breathlessly into the city room with an interview that would have made lively reading on page one. Finnegan killed that story because it could have done great harm to an innocent person.
Over in the Tribune Tower, the late Colonel McCormick was at the peak of his power. Grandson of the pioneer Tribune publisher, Joseph Medill, who had played such an important part in Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for President, McCormick was among the last of the publishers who could be considered rugged individualists. Few men were spared his wrath; he was always on the offensive. His targets included Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson; Marshall Field III (to whom he tried to deny Associated Press membership for the Sun); Henry Ford (who once emerged from a million-dollar libel suit against the Tribune with six cents in damages); all of Great Britain (which he frequently envisioned as “attacking” the United States from Canada, through Detroit!); and even the Colonel’s own cousin, Captain Joseph Medill Patterson. Though the two shared control of the Tribune when they took over in 1914, they soon agreed to separate. Patterson returned from World War I to establish the Tribune’s sister paper, the New York Daily News.
The Colonel’s diatribes against Franklin D. Roosevelt are still famous. The two men had been schoolmates at Groton School. McCormick delighted in saying of Roosevelt: “He wasn’t one of those students regarded as most promising or likely to succeed. In fact, I don’t think I would have remembered him if he hadn’t become President!”
The Colonel had many eccentricities. His enormous desk was set on a high dais in his tremendous office. He made frequent midnight forays into the city room of the Tribune, accompanied by a pair of huge German shepherd dogs. When rock-ribbed Republican Rhode Island ousted several GOP judges from its Supreme Court, he ordered a star to be torn from the Tribune Tower’s American flag. And he initiated the phonetic spelling system that often puzzled Tribune readers. His pride in his military service was reflected in the annual picnics he sponsored for the World War I Army buddies with whom he served in France. They would meet at his Cantigny Farm estate on the outskirts of Wheaton, Illinois. (Pursuant to the Colonel’s bequest, the farm is now an $850,000 military museum.)
As often as many of us disagreed with the Colonel’s policies and smiled at his foibles, we had to give him credit for his remarkable courage, daring, and newspaper acumen. These qualities are still reflected in the Tribune, under the editorial direction of W. Don Maxwell, who arrived at his present position by way of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and the Tribune sports department.
Although the late Marshall Field III did not enter the newspaper publishing field until he was advanced in years, he, too, must be considered an outstanding individualist and a publishing pioneer. Field, known as the “millionaire with a conscience,” made tremendous contributions to Chicago, including one of America’s first large-scale, privately financed slum clearance projects, the Marshall Field Garden Apartments. He also built the Field and Pittsfield Buildings in the Loop and helped found Roosevelt University, which he endowed through the $11,000,000 Field Foundation. But we newspapermen remember him best for his determination to establish a strong, liberal