Former 'Chicago Tribune,' UPI Chief McCrohon Dies at 76

By: (AP) Maxwell McCrohon, who arrived in the United States as an aspiring foreign correspondent and went on to lead the Chicago Tribune and United Press International, has died. He was 76.

McCrohon died Wednesday of lung cancer at the Community Hospice of Washington, said his wife of 49 years, Nancy McCrohon.

McCrohon, who was born in Australia, came to New York in the early 1950s as a correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. He met his future wife there and the couple married in 1955.

"He didn't plan to be an editor, he planned to be the greatest foreign correspondent that ever lived," she said.

McCrohon eventually landed a job at the Chicago American newspaper, which later became Chicago Today, where he was appointed managing editor in 1970.

Two years later, he became managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

"He created an environment in which investigative reporting was able to bloom," said Bernard Judge, the Tribune's city editor at the time, now publisher of the Daily Law Bulletin.

McCrohon's ability to organize and arrange copy was put to the test when an American Airlines flight crashed in a field shortly after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in May 1979, killing all 271 aboard and two people on the ground.

The Tribune's early editions were already at press when McCrohon decided he didn't like the layout and took it upon himself to fix it before the next edition went to print.

"The packaging was poorly executed and he personally re-laid the whole paper on deadline. That's not easy to do," Judge said.

McCrohon was later appointed editor of the Tribune in 1979, and named vice president of news in 1981. He left the paper in 1983 to become editor in chief of United Press International but left the wire service in 1986 when he was president and chief operating officer. He went on to become editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which published its last edition in 1989.

He also later worked at a joint U.S.-Russian newspaper and recently for The Hearst Corporation.

In addition to his wife, McCrohon is survived by two sons, a daughter and two grandchildren.