Chicago Inter Ocean

The Chicago Inter Ocean, also known as the Chicago Inter-Ocean, is the name used for most of its history for a newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, from 1865 until 1914. Its editors included Charles A. Dana.

History

The history of the Inter Ocean can be traced back to 1865 with the founding of the Chicago Republican, a partisan newspaper that supported the Republican party. Jacob Bunn, a prominent Illinois financier and industrialist, was the principal founder, and at one time the sole owner, of the Chicago Republican Company, and cooperated with several other Illinois financiers to establish the newspaper company in 1865. After enjoying both economic success and the chaotic blow of the 1871 Chicago Fire, the Republican was relaunched in 1872 as the Chicago-based Inter Ocean, a newspaper intended to appeal to an upscale readership.

With the building of transcontinental railroads, it was possible to deliver weekly newspapers by mail throughout the central and western U.S. The Inter Ocean developed a weekly edition that was intended to become a definitive source of news for businesspeople throughout the American West, and in fact fulfilled that role for several decades.

The growth of linotype newspapers printed on inexpensive newsprint in the 1890s led to another upheaval in the newspaper industry. Many non-Chicago subscribers to the Inter Ocean no longer needed the weekly paper and dropped their subscriptions.

The weakened paper fell in 1895 into the hands of Charles Yerkes, the notorious Chicago streetcar boss, who returned the newspaper to the partisan, subordinate role it had fulfilled in its youth.^[1] George Wheeler Hinman bought the paper in 1901 and sold it to H. H. Kohlsaat in 1912.^[2] It closed in 1914.^[3]

After the Inter Ocean ceased publication, the Inter Ocean Newspaper Company continued for several years as a firm in liquidation. While in this status the dying newspaper firm had the melancholy pleasure of winning a lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court, Caliga v. Inter Ocean (215 U.S. 182). The defunct newspaper was exonerated from the charge of having infringed upon the copyright of a painting used by the paper as an illustration.

References

1. ^ "Newspapers". Encyclopedia of Chicago. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/889.html. Retrieved 2008-07-16. 
2. ^ "Kohlsaat Buys Inter Ocean," New York Times, October 10, 1912. Captured July 28, 2010 at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D05E7DD133CE633A25753C1A9669D946396D6CF.
3. ^ "Time Regained: The Chicago Inter Ocean Building," ArchitectureChicago Plus, June 10, 2008 at http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2008/06/time-regained-chicago-inter-ocean.html, captured 7/28/2010.