Chicago

Jon Ziomek

Chicago has a longstanding reputation for wildly competitive journalism. The city also had a role to play in the early days of radio and television journalism, and has been a launching pad for a number of famous American writers and broadcast personalities. Chicago's style of aggressive journalism became known nationally through popular culture: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, both early-twentieth-century Chicago reporters who moved to Hollywood and became screenwriters, co-wrote a successful 1928 comic play, The Front Page , based on their own experiences in Chicago's cutthroat journalism during the early twentieth century. Its message was that Chicago reporters would do almost anything—including lying and stealing—to get a scoop. The story's manic energy inspired films and television series, thus spreading Chicago journalism's colorful reputation nationwide. Chicago's first newspaper, the weekly Chicago Democrat , began in the same year as the city's 1833 incorporation, when it had only 300 residents. Other ...

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