Joseph Medill Patterson

Joseph Medill Patterson was born into a newspaper family. His mother, Elinor Medill, was a daughter of Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune and a mayor of Chicago, Illinois. His father, Robert Wilson Patterson Jr., was himself a journalist at the Tribune.

As a scion of a millionaire family, Joseph received a top-flight education, attending Yale University where he was a member of Scroll and Key. He briefly left school to report on the Boxer Rebellion in China as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune, returning in time to complete his studies and graduate from Yale in 1901.

Patterson became one of the most significant newspaper publishers in the United States, founding the New York Daily News and introducing the tabloid format. He was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his namesake grandfather. As a young adult, he asked his father if he could go to China to cover the Boxer Rebellion. Granted permission, he went as a correspondent for William Randolph Hearst but did not arrive in time.

Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago, and covered the police beat for the Chicago Tribune. In 1903 he was part of a campaign committee led by his cousin Joseph Medill McCormick in support of Republican Nominee for 21st Ward Alderman candidate Fletcher Dobyns. Patterson served in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Republican from 1903 to 1905. From 1905 to 1906 he served as the City of Chicago's Commissioner of Public Works.

Joseph Medill Patterson feuded with his father and resigned from the Tribune. Patterson moved to a farm in the country, wrote a socialist novel, A Little Brother of the Rich (1908), shortly thereafter adapted for the stage, and published a muckraking article in Woman's World magazine, "The Sins of Society." In 1909 Patterson co-authored the play "The Fourth Estate" with Harriet Ford and James Keeley (that continued to be performed through at least 1930) and wrote playlet "Dope" about cocaine trafficking, and in 1910 authored plays "The Book of Judith," a modern retelling of the story of Judith and Holofernes, and "Rebellion," a drama about divorce that was denounced by Evanston's Catholic pastor, Rev. H.P. Smyth: "There is nothing in that printer's ink can do to save that play from being damned." The starring neglected wife role of "Rebellion" was performed by Gertrude Elliott. In 1911 he co-authored play "No Extradition" with Hugh Ford, based on the writings of O. Henry, and in 1912 he authored play "By-Products," starring his sister Cissy Patterson, to critical success. In 1914 his play "The Sell-Out" debuted with the Chicago Grand Opera Company. Patterson returned to work at the Tribune by 1910.

After his father died in 1910, Patterson took over the management of the Tribune. He had a dispute about how to run the Tribune with his cousin, Robert R. McCormick. After World War I ended and he returned from military service, he visited London and observed a newspaper in tabloid form for the first time. Patterson moved to New York City and founded the New York Daily News (first called the New York Illustrated News) as a tabloid that debuted June 26, 1919, with McCormick as co-editor and publisher. William H. Field (the Tribune's second vice president) had begun preparation for the tabloid's debut beginning in September 1918. In 1924, McCormick and Patterson co-founded Liberty magazine, which they sold to Bernarr MacFadden in April 1931. In 1925 Patterson ceded full authority over the Tribune to McCormick in return for full control of the Daily News.

During the 1930s, the Daily News under Patterson's leadership strongly supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. Both men counted each other as not only political allies but good friends, having met as classmates at the Groton School. In May 1940, Roosevelt even asked Patterson to be his Secretary of the Navy but was turned down. Although Patterson, along with his sister Cissy Patterson, supported the president's reelection in 1940, Joe and Cissy had a falling out with Roosevelt because of their opposition to Lend-Lease and other aspects of the administration's foreign policy. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Patterson immediately came to the oval office and offered his full support to the war effort but Roosevelt rebuffed him. "Roosevelt could easily have converted both Pattersons to his cause," writes Cissy's biographer, Ralph G. Martin. "Instead, he created two bitter and powerful enemies." In addition, as he had since early in 1941, Roosevelt repeatedly pressured Attorney General Francis Biddle and other officials to investigate and prosecute both of the Pattersons along with their cousin Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Daily Tribune. At the time of his death, Patterson was president of the News Syndicate, Co, Inc., a subsidiary corporation of the Tribune that published the Daily News and was involved in building, shipping, paper, and radio.

In 1902 he married Alice Higinbotham (son of Harlow Niles Higinbotham, a business partner of Marshall Field and President of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition). Together they had three daughters; Elinor (born 1903), Alicia (born 1906) and Josephine (born 1913). Alicia once stated, "He had wanted a boy, instead of three daughters in succession, and that meant one of the Patterson girls would have to be his substitute son." Nearly 20 years later, in 1923 his mistress and future wife Mary King (news editor) gave birth to his only son and his daughters' half-brother, James Joseph Patterson, in England. Alice and Joseph did not divorce until June 10, 1938, with Alice charging him with desertion ten years prior in 1928; Alice was granted the divorce uncontested. He married Mary King on July 5, 1938.

A hobby he enjoyed with his daughters was aviation. In 1928, Patterson took flying lessons at Curtiss Field with Frederick Becker, purchased the "largest amphibian plane ever built," and named it Liberty. His daughter Alicia took flying lessons the same year. Back in 1915, he had written a piece for the Tribune, "Aircraft in the Great European War," for which he went on a flight with French pilot Robert Morane, who took him for a "loop the loop." In 1928 Patterson and Alicia took the biplane Liberty together to the West Indies, Caribbean, and Central America. He later flew around Europe (1939), Hawaii (1942), and the Philippines and Micronesia (1945).