Timeline | Sun-Times Media Holdings

1846 The Aurora Beacon is first published.

1874 The Daily Bluff City, Elgin, Illinois' first newspaper, is launched. It is merged with The Elgin Daily News in 1876. The Elgin Courier-News is later created in 1925 from a merger of The Elgin Daily News and The Elgin Daily Courier, which was founded in 1884.

1877 The Joliet News is first published.

1892 Frank H. Just launches the weekly Independent in Libertyville and buys the Waukegan Daily Sun in 1906. He edited both papers and in 1911 changed the papers' names to The Lake County Independent and Waukegan Weekly Sun. He sold the Sun that year, and in 1916 launched a new paper, the Lake County Register, to compete with the Sun. He started the Waukegan Daily News in 1921 and continued building both enterprises and gaining in circulation. Heated competition forced the Sun's owners to sell it in 1929 to a group of Chicago investors with reported links to organized crime, but the stock market crash that year left the investors without the money to meet their loan commitments. Just - a Republican crusader against organized gambling - grabbed the opportunity and purchased The Daily Sun in 1930. He merged the papers to create The Waukegan News-Sun. The paper stayed in the Just family until 1984, when The Copley Press added it to its roster of 11 daily papers.

1901 Star Newspapers is launched.

1904 The Joliet Herald is launched.

1905 Col. Ira C. Copley bought the Aurora Beacon in December 1905, merging it with the Aurora News and three other newspapers into the Daily Beacon-News, which first appeared on January 2, 1912.

1906 The Daily Southtown is launched.

1908 The Gary Weekly is launched to serve the brand-new steel industry on the shores of Lake Michigan. It later becomes a daily paper and is renamed the Gary Tribune as the region grows. In 1921, the Gary Tribune merges with the Gary Evening Post, which was launched in 1909. The newspaper dropped “Gary” from the masthead in 1966 under new ownership to better reflect the growing Northwest Indiana region.

1913 Copley purchases The Herald in 1913 and added the printing equipment and circulation lists of The News to his company in 1915, when he merged the two papers to create the Herald News.

1929 Chicago Daily News is first published.

1935 The Naperville Sun is launched. Copley buys the paper in 1991.

1941 Marshall Field III starts the Chicago Sun newspaper on Dec. 4 – three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

1947 Field III buys the Chicago Daily Times.

1948 The Chicago Sun merges with the Chicago Daily Times to create the Sun-Times.

1959 Marshall Field IV, publisher of the Sun-Times from 1950 to 1965, buys the Chicago Daily News.

1978 The Chicago Daily News published its last edition on March 4.

1984 The Field family sells the Sun-Times to Rupert Murdoch's News America Inc.

1986 News America sells the Chicago Sun-Times to The Sun-Times Company Inc.. Investors in that company were New York investment firm Adler & Shaykin; the Equitable Capital Management Corp.; Robert Page, publisher of the paper from 1984 to 1988 and Donald Piazza, the paper's director of finance. The Sun-Times buys Star Publications, a group of community papers in the south and southwest suburbs.

1989 Sun-Times buys Pioneer Press, community papers in the north and northwest suburbs.

1994 The Sun-Times Company is purchased by American Publishing Co., the U.S. subsidiary of Hollinger Inc. of Canada. American Publishing becomes a publicly held company traded on the NYSE. American Publishing buys the Daily Southtown from Pulitzer Publishing Co.

1995 A corporate reorganization of American Publishing and Hollinger Inc. leads to the creation of Hollinger International Inc., which will include the Jerusalem Post and the Telegraph in the UK.

1998 Hollinger International buys the Post-Tribune in northwest Indiana.

2000 Hollinger International buys the division of California-based Copley Press Inc. called Fox Valley Press Inc. of Plainfield: the Fox Valley papers include the Beacon News in Aurora, Courier News in Elgin, the Herald-News in Joliet and the News Sun in Waukegan. Hollinger also bought Fox Valley Press' Sun Publications in Naperville, a group of 13 weekly papers.

2005 Hollinger International sells several Canadian newspapers.

2006 Hollinger International sells its remaining newspapers in Canada. The company later changes its name to Sun-Times Media Group.

2007 In a high profile criminal trial, four former executives of Hollinger International are found guilty of looting the company. The Daily Southtown and Star newspapers merge to create the SouthtownStar, the voice of the Southland.

2009 Sun-Times Media Group files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Later that year, the newspapers, Web sites and other assets of Sun-Times Media Group are sold to a local investor group led by Chicago businessman James C. Tyree.