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To critics, the Tribune is the Baby Huey of American newspapers—big, awkward, musclebound, stumbling over its own vast strength. Consistently profitable and increasingly dominant in the nation's third largest city, the paper employs 530 full-time editorial staffers, including 16 correspondents in Washington, eight in other U.S. cities outside Illinois, and four abroad. Yet for a paper of its visibility, the Trib has too little impact outside its region. The staff shares the industry's enthusiasm for blockbuster features, which tend to be deftly written and slickly packaged rather than penetrating. Says Journalism Director Neale Copple of the University of Nebraska: "The paper is solid but not very exciting."
The Tribune has shed almost completely a tradition of Midwestern Republican dogmatism, and it covers Chicago's tumultuous Democratic machine fairly. Among the paper's stars are Columnists Bob Greene, who specializes in offbeat portraits of ordinary people, and Mike Royko, a Chicago institution who jumped to the Trib along with about a dozen others when Australian Press Lord Rupert Murdoch took over its tabloid rival, the Sun-Times.
Editor James Squires, 41, a former Washington bureau chief who returned to the Trib in July 1981 after a five-year stint as top editor of the company-owned Orlando Sentinel, sees himself as the paper's "biggest fan and most severe critic." He has brought verve and consistency to layouts, unified the scattershot staffs, and pressured editors to ensure communication between reporters covering related stories—a problem at other dailies. Vows Squires: "We are coming into our own as an investigative paper."
The Des Moines Register
For about a month every four years, the Register rises into the ranks of the nation's most influential dailies. Then, after the Iowa presidential caucuses are over and the bandwagon of national political reporters moves on to other states, the paper resumes its normal role as one of the state's most powerful and respected institutions. Billed truthfully if somewhat immodestly as "the newspaper Iowa depends upon," the Register circulates in all 99 counties, and it relentlessly stresses the local angle in news events. Says former Washington Post Ombudsman William Green: "It is enormously influential in its state." The paper is the nation's best in reporting about agribusiness. Farming-related stories won two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1976 and 1979, for Washington Bureau Chief James Risser, and earned his colleague George Anthan a top 1983 award from the National Press Club.
The Register's weaknesses include drab coverage of culture and lifestyles, dismally cluttered section fronts and dim, grainy photos. Although Editor James Gannon, 44, is highly regarded as a political analyst and Corporate President Michael Gartner, 45, is a syndicated columnist on language and usage, much of the writing in the Register is flat. One notable exception: the paper's strongly worded editorial page. During the past couple of years, the paper has been burdened by corporate skirmishing among the owners, the Cowles family.