After a powerful Illinois state legislator resigned amid bribery allegations, the paper didnвЂ™t have a reporter in Springfield to follow the resulting scandal.

Meanwhile, the TribuneвЂ™s remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspaperвЂ™s most basic functions. But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism. The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants Amanda Mull When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. In the ensuing exodus, the paper lost the Metro columnist who had championed the occupants of a troubled public-housing complex, and the editor who maintained a homicide database that the police couldnвЂ™t manipulate, and the photographer who had produced beautiful portraits of the stateвЂ™s undocumented immigrants, and the investigative reporter whoвЂ™d helped expose the governorвЂ™s offshore shell companies. Two days after the deal was finalized, Alden announced an aggressive round of buyouts. The new owners did not fly to Chicago to address the staff, nor did they bother with paeans to the vital civic role of journalism. In May, the Tribune was acquired by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that has quickly, and with remarkable ease, become one of the largest newspaper operators in the country. But whatвЂ™s happening in Chicago is different. This is the story weвЂ™ve been telling for decades about the dying local-news industry, and itвЂ™s not without truth. Craigslist killed the Classified section, Google and Facebook swallowed up the ad market, and a procession of hapless newspaper owners failed to adapt to the digital-media age, making obsolescence inevitable. Spend some time around the shell-shocked journalists at the Tribune these days, and youвЂ™ll hear the same question over and over: How did it come to this? On the surface, the answer might seem obvious.

Here was one of AmericaвЂ™s most storied newspapers-a publication that had endorsed Abraham Lincoln and scooped the Treaty of Versailles, that had toppled political bosses and tangled with crooked mayors and collected dozens of Pulitzer Prizes-reduced to a newsroom the size of a Chipotle. The scene was somehow even grimmer than IвЂ™d imagined. After a long walk down a windowless hallway lined with cinder-block walls, I got in an elevator, which deposited me near a modest bank of desks near the printing press. To find the paperвЂ™s current headquarters one afternoon in late June, I took a cab across town to an industrial block west of the river. It has not, however, retained the Chicago Tribune. A century later, the Tribune Tower has retained its grandeur. The final product, completed in 1925, was an architectural spectacle unlike anything the city had seen before-вЂњromance in stone and steel,вЂќ as one writer described it. PeterвЂ™s Basilica-and send them back to be embedded in the towerвЂ™s facade. Prior to the buildingвЂ™s completion, McCormick directed his foreign correspondents to collect вЂњfragmentsвЂќ of various historical sites-a brick from the Great Wall of China, an emblem from St. The best architects of the era were invited to submit designs lofty quotes about the Fourth Estate were selected to adorn the lobby.

McCormick, the longtime owner of the Chicago Tribune, said he wanted to erect вЂњthe worldвЂ™s most beautiful office buildingвЂќ for his beloved newspaper. When plans for the building were announced in 1922, Colonel Robert R. The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of Gothic spires and flying buttresses that were designed to exude power and prestige.

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