Eleanor Josephine Medill "Cissy" Patterson, Countess Gizycki (November 7, 1881 – July 24, 1948) was an American journalist and newspaper editor, publisher and owner.

Cissy's older brother, who for a time was also involved in the Tribune, Joseph Medill Patterson, was the founder of the New York Daily News.

When her uncle Robert S. McCormick was named ambassador to Austria-Hungary, she accompanied him and his wife, Cissy's maternal aunt Kate, to Vienna.

There, she met Count Josef Gizycki and fell in love with him, a romance not interrupted even by her return to America, where she lived in Washington, D.C.

In 1920, her brother Joseph finally succumbed to his sister's pleas and allowed her to write for his New York Daily News, founded the previous year.

She published two novels, romans à clef, Glass Houses (1926) and Fall Flight (1928), part of her feud with former friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

"[6] Amanda Smith, 2011"She revitalized the paper and promptly changed the Times from a staid and plodding publication to one more vitally interested in the most tawdry murders to women’s issues and society columns.

[8][9] Located on extensive grounds near Rosaryville, Maryland, since about 1910 the mansion's owners had operated it as Dower House, an exclusive restaurant, but it suffered a severe fire in February 1931.

[10] Patterson not only meticulously restored the mansion, but improved the stables, added a guest house, and built a greenhouse for growing orchids.

Although her Times-Herald, along with brother Joe Patterson's New York Daily News, endorsed the president for a third term in 1940, both turned against his foreign policy by early 1941.

"[12] During World War II, she and her brother were accused of being Nazi sympathizers even though both had endorsed the president in the previous three elections.

After sounding out several other publishers quietly, McCormick opted to sell the paper to the rival Post, which promptly closed it.

As Countess Gizycki, Patterson was a frequent visitor to her ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the 1920s, where Donald Hough records[citation needed] an unexpected aspect of her personality: the ability to speak effectively to horses in language worthy of a native cowboy.