Robert Rutherford McCormick was an American lawyer, editor and publisher. He was owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald and the New York Daily News.
Background
Robert R. McCormick was born on July 30, 1880, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. His father, Robert Sanderson McCormick, was the first American ambassador to Austria-Hungary; his mother, Kate Medill, was the daughter of Joseph Medill, a founder of the Republican party.
Education
Young McCormick went to school in England while his father was an attache in London. He graduated from Yale University in 1903. He then studied law at the Northwestern University School of Law.
Before he had even finished law school, McCormick had served as the city alderman from the twenty-first ward and as the president for the sanitary district. He developed his executive and organizational skills in these capacities by firing unqualified workers, implementing helpful projects, and running these projects like a successful business. After law school he opened a law practice with two other partners; their offices were in the Tribune Company building. His brother, Joseph Medill McCormick, had been expected to take over the Tribune Company, but he was drinking heavily and was more interested in politics. Bertie, on the other hand, became increasingly interested in the family business.
At this time, McCormick’s father had been transferred to Russia. A British colleague, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, began to damage the McCormick’s father’s character and competency in the eyes of President Roosevelt. McCormick’s father was relieved of his duties in Russia and later assigned to another post in France, but his career had been destroyed. This is possibly the reason behind McCormick’s animosity toward the British. His father became increasingly depressed and died of pneumonia in a nursing home in 1916.
In 1910, McCormick's uncle, Robert Patterson (managing editor of the Chicago Tribune), died unexpectedly. The paper was about to be sold to the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, Victor Lawson, when McCormick intervened. McCormick had been working as the treasurer for the business, and persuaded the trustees to entrust the paper to his cousin, Joe Patterson. The two men became joint-publishers, and in 1911 McCormick became the president of the Tribune. He was elected to the board of directors a year later. McCormick and Patterson divided their responsibilities on a monthly basis to avoid power struggles and disagreements.
Throughout his leadership he founded many innovations not only in his own paper, but also in the newspaper business. He invented most of the Tribune's comic strips and was the first to implement continuity in comics, increasing loyalty among readers. Predicting a population boom in Chicago, he made plans to double his circulation by 1950. Paper supplies in the United States were dwindling, so he built his own pulp and paper mill in Canada. By 1914 the entire Tribune was printed on this paper. This led to power-generating, mining and shipping industries which widened the Tribune's financial base and gave an economic boost to the region.
In 1915, McCormick was commissioned a colonel in the First Cavalry of the Illinois National Guard. With his officer’s credentials he visited the Russian front and wrote an account of his experiences there titled With the Russian Army. When the First Illinois Cavalry was sent after Pancho Villa in Texas, he took a permanent commission as a major in 1916.
McCormick was promoted to lieutenant colonel when the United States entered World War I in 1917. His study of military affairs culminated in two books on the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, the Great Soldier of America and The War Without Grant.
McCormick had his critics, and the Tribune was a favorite target. Yet the Tribune continued to enjoy great popularity. McCormick succeeded in eliminating William Randolf Hearst from the Chicago morning field, and purchased the last available newsprint in the United States. He implemented several new divisions within the Tribune, and was among the first to publish a section of his paper in color. The paper promoted public events like the Golden Gloves boxing tournament. Aware of the potentials of radio, McCormick began giving radio talks which would reappear on the following day’s editorial Page of the Tribune.
McCormick was also the publisher of the Washington Times-Herald from 1948 to 1954, and with his partner, Joseph Patterson, established the tabloid the New York Daily News.
In 1954 McCormick's career began to slow down. He stopped writing his Sunday bylines and ceased his radio addresses, and was forced to sell the Washington Times-Herald because of a long illness. He moved to Red Oaks, where he died at the age of seventy-four, on April 1, 1955. At his death, the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation was established as a charitable trust, and in 1991 restructured as a foundation for communities, journalism, education and citizenship.
Ever the capitalist, McCormick staunchly opposed Roosevelt’s New Deal. He resented the government’s meddling in business. He was also an active defender of the rights of the press, compiling his talks on the subject into the book The Freedom of the Press. McCormick was an isolationist, battling against the United States’s involvement in World War II. Critics accused him of treason when, the week before it was to be carried out, McCormick printed Roosevelt's Victory Program.
Membership
McCormick was a member of the ANPA Freedom of the Press Committee.
Personality
"McCormick did consider himself an aristocrat, and his imposing stature—6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) tall, with a muscular body weighing over 200 pounds (91 kg), his erect soldierly bearing, his reserved manner and his distinguished appearance—made it easy for him to play that role. But if he was one, he was an aristocrat, according to his friends, in the best sense of the word, despising the idle rich and having no use for parasites, dilettantes or mere pleasure-seekers, whose company, clubs and amusements he avoided. With an extraordinary capacity for hard work, he often put in seven long days a week at his job even when elderly, keeping fit through polo and later horseback riding. In his seventies, he could still get into the war uniform of his thirties."
Interests
Sport & Clubs
Polo, horse riding
Connections
In 1915 McCormick had married Amie Irwin Adams, who died in 1939. He married Maryland Matheson Hooper in 1944. He had no children.
Contemporary Authors
A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields