Page 32 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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CHRISTIAN
director
of
he became COALITION the Mass Communication Research Center. In 1981, he
returned to Stanford University to become director of the Institute for Com-
munications Research, where he is today.
Chaffee has served as a public opinion analyst for political candidates (in-
cluding polling for the Democratic Party campaign from 1966 to 1984) and as
a communication consultant to other groups. He has written many books, in-
cluding Political Communications: Issues and Strategies for Research, which
deals with the role of the mass media in the political communications process.
Perhaps his major research contribution was the development with Wisconsin
colleague Jack McLeod of the theory of co-orientation. (See also Co-orientation;
Family Communication Patterns.)
SOURCES: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 106, 1982; Who's Who in America, 1997-
1998.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

CHICAGO TRIBUNE. The Tribune has proclaimed itself the world's greatest
newspaper (hence the call letters WGN of the radio and television station it
owns). It has generally been considered one of the leading newspapers in the
United States, but its political heritage has been a handicap. The paper was
started in 1847 and came under the control of Joseph Medill in 1855. Medill
was one of the leaders in the founding of the Republican Party and was instru-
mental in getting Abraham Lincoln nominated in 1860. He remained in control
of the paper until 1899, except for two years when he was the Republican mayor
of Chicago.
In 1910, Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson, cousins, assumed con-
trol of the Tribune. Patterson went to New York to start the Daily News in 1919,
and McCormick was in control of the Tribune for the next 36 years. Medill had
made the Tribune Republican and increasingly conservative. McCormick accen-
tuated that and made the Tribune isolationist as well. Furthermore, as many
studies demonstrated, the Republican bias was all too evident in the news col-
umns of the Tribune.
The Tribune stayed that way for more than a decade after McCormick's death
but changed under the leadership of Clayton Kirkpatrick, who became editor in
1969. Editorializing in news columns was curbed, and the strident editorial voice
was restrained. The result has been a newfound respect from both readers and
the newspaper industry.
SOURCES: Michael Emery, America's Leading Daily Newspapers, 1983; Kenneth
Stewart and John Tebbel, Makers of Modern Journalism, 1952.
Guido H. Stempel HI

CHRISTIAN COALITION was founded in 1989 as a group of private citizens
organized to support politicians and political issues that reflect and protect con-
servative Christian values in America. Although it started as a grassroots or-