Due to McCormick's endeavors, the Tribune Company invested in Canadian forests, built paper mills in Quebec and Ontario, and purchased a fleet of lake ships that enabled it to produce newspapers from the log to the finished product, a feat that was unequaled anywhere in the world. He was the first to invest in developing the northern side of the St. Lawrence River, and this business acumen enabled him and his paper to survive editorial faux pas (for example, his impassioned defense of one of his reporters--Jake Lingle--who had gangster connections and was gunned down on the street) that might have toppled a less well run enterprise.
McCormick made the Tribune one of the best papers to work for in America. He paid the highest salaries and offered irresistible benefits such as generous sick leave, pensions, speedy death benefits, cheap credit, group insurance and hospitalization, free dental care, free medical attention in office emergencies, and free lunch nightly for city room workers.
The outspoken, opinionated, stubborn McCormick, although best known as a journalist, was also a lawyer, public official, historian, soldier, radio performer, amateur polo player, and world traveler. He was born on 30 July 1880 at home on Ontario Street in Chicago, Illinois, the second son (an older sister died in infancy) of Robert Sanderson McCormick and Katherine Medill McCormick.
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