In 1940, Marshall Field III, a wealthy grandson of the founder of the giant Chicago company, entered the publishing business by backing PM, a left-leaning newspaper published in New York City. In 1941, Field launched the Chicago Sun, which was conceived as a liberal alternative to the conservative Tribune. In 1947, Field bought the Chicago Daily Times, which had been founded in 1929 as the city's first tabloid, and merged it into the Sun. This created the Chicago Sun-Times, which during the second half of the twentieth century became the primary rival of the Tribune. By the 1950s, when it was led by Marshall Field IV, Field Enterprises was a major media company that owned not only the Sun-Times but also the World Book Encyclopedia, the book publisher Simon & Schuster, and several radio stations around the country. In 1959, Field Enterprises bought the Chicago Daily News, which had long been one of the city's leading newspapers. (In 1978, the Daily News was folded into the Sun-Times.) In the early 1980s, the Field family decided to get out of the media business, and Field Enterprises was dismantled. The Sun-Times was sold to international media titan Rupert Murdoch in 1984; 10 years later, it was acquired by Hollinger International Inc. of Vancouver, which soon opened offices in Chicago. By this time, Field Enterprises had ceased to exist as a media company.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.