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Walter Mahoney – RIP

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D. D. Degg Published: December 17, 2025 Updated: February 17, 2026 1 minute 1 comment

Former Tribune Media Services Sales Manager and Senior VP Walter Mahoney has passed away.

From the obituary:

After growing up in Richmond, Va, he attended the University of Georgia, graduating with a degree in Journalism.

Walter was the Senior Vice President of Tribune Media Services, where he worked for 38 years, and helped develop a newswire service connecting newspapers across the world.

Bob Goldsborough for The Chicago Tribune went deeper into Walter’s career (or here):

During a 38-year career as an executive at Tribune Media Services — now known as Tribune Content Agency — Walter Mahoney took great pride in promoting and encouraging both the talent that his agency managed, as well as working to mentor employees of his organization.

In 1974, what then was known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate — later Tribune Media Services — hired Mahoney. He worked in sales in several locations, including Cincinnati, New York City and Orlando, Florida, where by the early 1990s he had become vice president of sales.

Mr Mahony joined the Tribune company as sales representative for the Midwest and Southwest in 1974. Prior to that he was the Midwest representative for United Feature Syndicate. In 1977 he was promoted to the Chicago Tribune Syndicate Sales Manager.

Mahoney oversaw Tribune Media Services’ features syndicate under the title of vice president for domestic syndication, and then he helped form an associated news service through a partnership with the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. He continued developing that news service after Knight-Ridder was sold to the McClatchy newspaper chain in 2006, and in 2011, as a senior vice president, he began overseeing both the partnership with McClatchy and the agency’s features like comic strips, puzzles and columnists.

The organization was renamed Tribune Content Agency in 2014, shortly after Mahoney retired [in 2012].

During Mahoney’s career, Tribune Media Services had hundreds of local newspaper clients around the country who purchased syndicated content — from editorial cartoonists and comics to advice columnists, the daily Jumble game and crossword puzzles.

“Walter was a mentor to me,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman, whose work has been syndicated for decades by the Tribune Content Agency and before that by Tribune Media Services. “He was always very encouraging to me, and he’s somebody who literally constructed my career. He got me into 392 papers in four days at age 20, and that made me the second most-read cartoonist in America.”

Mahoney worked intently to develop Ohman’s career as an editorial cartoonist. Ohman said Mahoney gave him his “sea legs.”

“Every step of the way through my career, Walter was there, helping me and supporting me,” he said.

Mahoney also championed the 1994 launch of Ohman’s comic strip, “Mixed Media,” placing it in 100 newspapers in its first week.

Mahoney, 74. died at UChicago Medicine AdventHealth Hinsdale Hospital on Nov. 20 after being struck by a car on Ogden Avenue in Western Springs while out on a walk.