Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Chicago Sun-Times was formed in 1948 through the merger of the Chicago Sun, founded by Marshall Field III on the 4th of December 1941, and the Chicago Daily Times, which had been publishing since 1929. Field Enterprises, controlled by the Marshall Field family, owned the paper for several decades.
Journalists at the Chicago Sun-Times have won eight Pulitzer Prizes. Recipients include Roger Ebert in 1975 for Criticism, making him the first film critic to receive the prize, and Frank Main, Mark Konkol, and John J. Kim in 2011 for Local Reporting.
The Chicago Sun-Times is owned by Chicago Public Media, the nonprofit organization that also owns WBEZ, Chicago's National Public Radio affiliate. The paper formally merged into Chicago Public Media on the 30th of January 2022, backed by $61 million from several philanthropic organizations.
In 1977, the Sun-Times bought and operated a saloon called the Mirage Tavern on Wells Street in Chicago. Undercover reporters used the bar to expose a pattern of civic corruption and bribery, photographing city officials without their knowledge. The resulting 25-part series drew wide attention but a Pulitzer nomination was blocked by judges who considered the undercover operation a form of entrapment.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased the Chicago Sun-Times in 1984. The paper's style shifted abruptly toward sensational front pages and a markedly rightward political stance, mirroring that of the New York Post. Murdoch sold the paper in 1986 for $145 million in a leveraged buyout in order to acquire the television station WFLD and help launch the Fox network.
The Sunday, the 18th of May 2025 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times included a 64-page promotional insert containing AI-generated book recommendations that featured nonexistent books and fabricated quotes. The insert was written by Marco Buscaglia, who admitted to using AI without fact-checking. The content had been licensed from King Media, a Hearst subsidiary, and also ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer.