The Tribune's editorials were widely read, shared, and copied in other city newspapers, helping to shape national opinion.

[6] To promote multiple reforms, Greeley hired a roster of writers who later became famous in their own right, including Margaret Fuller,[7] Charles Anderson Dana, George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, Julius Chambers, and Henry Jarvis Raymond, who later co-founded The New York Times.

[9] Marx resented much of his time working for the Tribune, particularly the many edits and deadlines they imposed upon him, and bemoaned the "excessive fragmentation of [his] studies", noting that since much of his work was reporting on current economic events, "I was compelled to become conversant with practical detail which, strictly speaking, lie outside the sphere of political economy".

This made the paper the largest circulation daily in New York City—gaining commensurate influence among voters and political decision-makers in the process.

[15] During the Civil War Greeley crusaded against slavery, lambasting Democrats while calling for a mandatory draft of soldiers for the first time in the U.S.

This led to an Irish mob attempting to burn down the Tribune building in lower Manhattan during the Draft Riots.

In 1886, with Reid's support, the Tribune became the first publication in the world to be printed on a linotype machine, which was invented by a German immigrant, inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler.

The original paper articles from the newspaper's morgue are kept at The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.