Joseph Medill Patterson

Joseph Medill Patterson (January 6, 1879 – May 26, 1946) was an American

As a scion of a millionaire family, Joseph received a top-flight education, attending Yale University.^[1] 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.^[1]

Career

Patterson became one of the most significant

Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago, and covered the police beat for the Chicago Tribune. Patterson served in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Republican in 1903 and 1904,^[2] married and was the father of three daughters by 1906. The youngest, Alicia, explained, "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, after his three daughters had become young women, his mistress (and future wife) gave birth to his only son, James Joseph Patterson, in England.

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),

After his father died, 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, 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 as a tabloid on June 26, 1919, with McCormick as co-editor and publisher. However, the two were unable to resolve their dispute, so 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. 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.^[6]

Comic strips

He took a hands-on approach to managing the

Caniff recounted Patterson's role in creating Terry in a Time profile, "Escape Artist" (Monday, January 13, 1947):

Patterson... stared coldly at Caniff and asked: "Ever do anything on the Orient?" Caniff hadn't. "You know," Joe Patterson mused, "adventure can still happen out there. There could be a beautiful lady pirate, the kind men fall for." In a few days Caniff was back with samples and 50 proposed titles; Patterson circled Terry and scribbled beside it and the Pirates.

Another item of Patterson comic strip lore is that he rejected