Tribune Publishing is a Chicago-based media company, the United States’ second-largest newspaper publisher. It was formerly part of the Tribune Company.

Tribune Publishing owns 10 daily newspapers, including its flagship, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant. As part of the Tribune Co., it had owned 42 television stations, along with the cable network WGN and the digital music company Gracenote, which it bought in 2014.

In 2013, it announced it would split off its publishing properties from its broadcasting properties, spinning its newspapers into Tribune Publishing and retaining the broadcasting assets as part of Tribune Media, though some expressed concern that such an arrangement would threaten the papers’ survival. The split was completed in August 2014. Tribune Publishing’s value was estimated at $635 million, and it carried at least $325 million in debt going into its split. Three investment firms own a total of 40% of Tribune Publishing and control the company.

The company was born in 1847 with the launch of the Chicago Tribune and went public in 1983. The Tribune doubled its size in 2000 by buying the Times Mirror Co., which published the Los Angeles Times and Newsday.

Real estate magnate Sam Zell took control of the Tribune in 2007, making it private in an $8.2 billion deal that Zell later said he regretted. Zell quickly drew attention for his fiery personality and harsh style: Under Zell, the Tribune sold off Newsday in 2008 to pay off debt and made deep staff cuts at several of its papers, running out several newspaper executives when they refused to comply. Zell’s leadership was heavily criticized in the light of those moves and the company’s struggles.

The company began posting losses in 2008 and filed for bankruptcy later that year, the first major newspaper company to go bankrupt in more than 70 years. The paper emerged from bankruptcy on the last day of 2012 under the ownership of various creditors led by the Los Angeles hedge fund Oaktree Capital Management. The Tribune sold off majority ownership of the Chicago Cubs as part of bankruptcy proceedings in 2009. As it prepared to exit bankruptcy in July 2012, documents filed earlier that year indicated it planned to spin off many of its newspaper and broadcast units into separate subsidiaries, and it was reported in early 2013 to have hired bankers to sell its papers. Reportedly interested buyers included Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, though the latter backed out of the process. The Tribune announced a plan in late 2013 to cut 700 jobs across the company.

In 2008, Zell hired former XM Radio executive Lee Abrams as the company’s chief innovation officer. Abrams helped engineer several redesigns at the Tribune’s papers, though his breathless memos drew criticism in journalism circles.