The Daily Southtown (formerly SouthtownStar) is a newspaper of the Chicago, Illinois, United States metropolitan area that covers the south suburbs and the South Side neighborhoods of the city – a wide region known as the Chicago Southland. Its popular slogan is "People Up North Just Don't Get It" (a pun). It is published by the Chicago Tribune Media Group.
Founded on September 11, 1906, the Southtown celebrated its 100th year as a paper in 2006. Originally called the Englewood Economist, it was retitled the Southtown Economist in 1924 and began publishing twice weekly. The newspaper relocated from Chicago's Englewood community to the west end of the city in Garfield Ridge in 1968. In 1986, the Economist was purchased by Pulitzer Publishing; they renamed the paper the Daily Southtown in 1993, but sold the paper to the American Publishing Company the next year. The paper relocated to suburban Tinley Park in 1997.
On November 18, 2007, the twice-weekly neighborhood newspaper, The Star was merged into the Daily Southtown to create the SouthtownStar, which is circulated daily with a special Neighborhood Star pull-out section on Thursdays and Sundays. In 2014, the SouthtownStar was purchased by the Chicago Tribune Media Group along with the other Wrapports Chicago suburban papers. The name was changed back to the Daily Southtown.
The paper maintains bureaus in Chicago city hall and the city's federal courts building.
Like its larger counterparts, the newspaper also entered into the broadcasting business in 1925 with a license to operate radio station WBCN. WBCN started broadcasting on 1130kHz from the paper's offices at 65th and Halsted. They soon entered into an agreement of time-sharing of the frequency with radio station WENR, then owned by the All-American Radio Company. By the next year, both stations had moved to 1040 kHz, still retaining their time-sharing agreement. By 1927, Chicago financial magnate Samuel Insull had become interested in both WBCN and WENR. Insull, who had been a founder of station KYW, sold his interest in the station. His newly formed Great Lakes Broadcasting bought them both, and moved them on the dial to 870 kHz. When Insull's fortune began to disappear, he sold the licenses of both radio stations to National Broadcasting Company in 1931. The two were officially merged with WBCN leaving the air in early 1933.