The Herald covers local business, retail, politics, real estate and housing, the University of Chicago, sports, K–12 education and local Chicago Public Schools, parks (including the Barack Obama Presidential Center), crime, obituaries and fire.

In 2006, Herald sister publication Lakefront Outlook won the George Polk Award.

Future Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote for the Herald while working toward his master's degree from 1947 to 1951.

Lee Botts, a prominent Great Lakes environmentalist and a senior official in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, was editor of the Herald in the late 1960s.

Democratic political consultant David Axelrod wrote for the paper while a student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s.