Sign up for the new Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter
The Chicago Tribune’s photo files, newspaper clippings, recipe cards, book collection and other accumulated ephemera have been for the exclusive use of its staff during the paper’s almost 175 years in operation.
Starting last week, however, everyone will have the opportunity to virtually take a deep dive into the Tribune’s stacks with the launch of the Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter.
The weekly dispatches will be free, but a Tribune subscription can be obtained for the retro-inspired price of just 10 cents for 12 weeks.
The e-mail newsletter is an extension of the news organization’s Sunday Flashback feature stories and popular @vintagetribune Instagram account, which has shared more than 6,000 images from the Tribune’s library of negative, print and digital photos since 2014, and attracted more than 93,000 followers.
About 300 of these images were captured in the 2018 book, “Vintage Chicago: The Best of @vintagetribune on Instagram,” which can be purchased through the Tribune’s e-commerce store for $18.75.
Released each Thursday, the newsletter will give readers a look back at events, places and people involved in shaping Chicago’s past, present and future, in ways both small and big.
Want to see what the Tribune’s collections hold on a specific person or topic? Have an idea for a future newsletter theme? Email the newsletter’s curators, Marianne Mather and Kori Rumore.
Mather, a senior visual editor who has worked at the Tribune since 2012, chooses the photos for the nostalgia-themed Instagram account and Flashback history page. In about a decade of searching through the paper’s thousands of photos, she’s become the most knowledgeable about the organization — or lack thereof — of the Tribune’s reserves. But, she says, that just makes the hunt for buried pictorial treasures that much more thrilling.
Like when she found the infamous Bernie Sanders arrest photo. Or when she uncovered the photos of the SS Eastland in time for the 100-year anniversary of the deadliest inland maritime disaster in U.S. history. And when she found a mislabeled photo of one of Chicago’s early settlers, John Kinzie, she and city editor Mark Jacob had fun finally correcting the error some 70 years later.
Rumore started her career at the Tribune as a data visualization reporter in 2013, and shares Mather’s love for the paper’s special collections.
She recently mined the archive to recreate midcentury holiday-themed recipes and force the people she loves — her family, her neighbors and Tribune food critic Louisa Chu — to eat them. She’s also visually explained the outcome of more than 100 years and 204 games in the Chicago BearsGreen Bay Packers rivalry, compiled a comprehensive timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s case and the ongoing efforts to identify his 33 victims, and worked with Tribune photographer Brian Cassella to pinpoint six buildings that survived the Great Chicago Fire and still stand today.
The duo have worked together on a variety of stories unearthing Tribune’s cache of classics including explaining the origin of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Chicago roots, exploring how today’s COVID crisis mirrors the 1918 flu pandemic and revisiting Al Capone’s final days, death and burial.
They researched the origins of the popular play turned musical turned Oscar-winning movie ‘Chicago’ and compiled the 2020 book “He Had It Coming: Four Murderous Women and the Reporter Who Immortalized Their Stories,” which is available for $27.99 in the Tribune’s e-commerce store.