TCA is headquartered in Chicago, and had offices in various American cities (Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Queensbury, New York; Arlington, Texas; Santa Monica, California), the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong.

Sidney Smith 's early comic strip The Gumps had a key role in the rise of syndication when Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson, who had both been publishing the Chicago Tribune since 1914, planned to launch a tabloid in New York, as comics historian Coulton Waugh explained: So originated on June 16, 1919, the Illustrated Daily News, a title which, as too English, was almost at once clipped to (New York) Daily News.

It was a picture paper, and it was a perfect setting for the newly developed art of the comic strip.

It was the almost instant popularity of this famous strip that directly brought national syndication into being.

In 2014, Tribune bought out McClatchy's share of the company, taking full ownership of MCT[10] and moving its headquarters to Chicago.

TCA distributes media products, such as news, columns, comic strips, Jumble and crosswords, printed insert books, video, and other information services to publications across the United States, Canada, and other countries in English and Spanish[14] for both print and web syndication.