Ione Quinby Griggs

In the early 1920s, Griggs began writing for the Chicago Evening Post.[5] There, she became a public voice for women.[3] In her early career, Griggs covered the crime beat, specializing in cases where women were tried for murders of husbands, boyfriends, and lovers. Over time she branched out, many times covering topics generally reserved for male reporters. She also competed with other female journalists, such as Maurine Dallas Watkins for exclusive scoops on sensational crime stories.[6]

Griggs interviewed Al Capone while he was in jail for tax evasion, shared a candy bar with him, and even covered his sister's wedding.[7][8] While she has often been classified as a "sob sister,"[3] and embraced dramatic opportunities to write beyond sensationalized murders—such as when she rode an elephant in a parade and subsequently wrote about it[9]—she also covered politics extensively. In addition, although fewer than five percent of local coverage in the Chicago Evening Post had bylines, Grigs had over one thousand bylined stories in her time at the paper; for a span of some years she bylined in a third of the daily papers.[3] During the Great Depression, Griggs wrote about unemployment and homelessness among Chicago's women.[3] Griggs' biographers concur with history scholar Alice Fahs that, along with other female reporters at the time, Griggs "placed women at the heart of a new public life."[10][3]

Over time, in addition to her writing for the Chicago Evening Post, Griggs was also writing for crime magazines and syndicated news services as a freelancer.[3] Then, in 1931, she published a book about female killers, Murder for Love.[11]

By 1932, the Chicago Evening Post was struggling due to the economic pressures of the depression, and was forced to lay off many of its writers; due to her high-profile Griggs was not among them.[12][3] In October, 1932, the Chicago Evening Post was absorbed by the Chicago Daily News, ending Griggs' Chicago run.[12][5] She married Bruce E. Griggs, formerly a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal who had built a career as a freelance writer.[5][2][3] They continued her family's penchant for moving around, taking freelance work in various locations around the country.[5] Only a year after they were wed, her husband died in an automobile accident in December, 1933.[5][2] By January 1934, Griggs moved to Wisconsin to take a job at the Milwaukee Journal, where she was paid "space rates," or only for the portion of her writing that the newspaper ultimately printed.[2] She took a room at the Hotel Wisconsin, where she continued to live for decades, within walking distance of the newspaper.[13]

Although she started out writing various news stories for the paper, in November 1934 Griggs published her first "Dear Mrs. Griggs" advice column, which she would continue to write for over half a century and which would become the mainstay of the Milwaukee Journal.[14] Originally imagined as help for the lovelorn, in the more than 15,000 "Dear Mrs. Griggs" columns—all signed by "IQG"—she covered a wide range of topics from parenting to why high school classmates who were "wild girls" gained popularity to disability, and gender roles.[14][13]

Griggs retired in 1985.[13] That same year she was inducted to the Milwaukee Press Club's Hall of Fame.[15][16] Specifically, she was awarded the Semi-Sacred Cat Award.[17] The University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee's Department of Journalism now offers the Ione Quinby Griggs Journalism Scholarship.[18]

Ione Qinby Griggs died in 1991 at the age of 100.[13]