The Chicago Sun Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The November 19, 2008 front page of the Chicago Sun-Times
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner(s)	Sun-Times Media Group (Wrapports LLC)
Publisher	Jim Kirk
Editor	Jim Kirk
Founded	1948
Headquarters	350 N. Orleans Chicago, IL 60654 United States
Country	United States
Circulation	470,548 Daily 268,413 Saturday 406,094 Sunday
ISSN	1553-8478
Website	chicago.suntimes.com
Media of the United States List of newspapers

The Chicago Sun-Times is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.

The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city. It began in 1844 as the Chicago Daily Journal, which was the first newspaper to publish the rumor, now believed false, that a cow owned by Catherine O'Leary was responsible for the Chicago fire. The Evening Journal, whose West Side building at 17-19 S. Canal was undamaged, gave the Chicago Tribune a temporary home until it could rebuild. In 1929, the newspaper was relaunched as the Chicago Daily Illustrated Times.

The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun, founded December 4, 1941 by Marshall Field III, and the Chicago Daily Times. The newspaper was owned by Field Enterprises, controlled by the Marshall Field family, which acquired the afternoon Chicago Daily News in 1959 and launched WFLD television in 1966. When the Daily News ended its run in 1978, much of its staff, including Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko, were moved to the Sun-Times. During the Field period, the newspaper had a populist, progressive character that leaned Democratic but was independent of the city's Democratic establishment. Although the graphic style was urban tabloid, the paper was well regarded for journalistic quality and did not rely on sensational front-page stories. It typically ran articles from the Washington Post/Los Angeles Times wire service.

Among the most prominent members of the newspaper's staff was cartoonist Jacob Burck, who was hired by the Chicago Times in 1938, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 and continued with the paper after it became the Sun-Times, drawing nearly 10,000 cartoons over a 44-year career.