Radebaugh grew to know Patrick, who owned and operated a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz.

[2] In 1882, H.C. Patrick left The Ledger and subsequently bought The Pierce County News, another weekly owned by George Mattice which was first published on August 10, 1881; he renamed the latter to The Weekly Tacoma News and doubled its size.

Radebaugh re-entered the market in 1908 with the debut of The Tacoma Daily Tribune, which began publication on June 12, but he underestimated the capital needed to run the newspaper successfully and sold it in 1910; by early 1912, its insolvency had reached $250,000, with John S. Baker as a principal creditor.

Subsequent negotiations resulted in Baker acquiring the two papers from Perkins, with Baker merging The News and The Tribune together to form The Tacoma News Tribune, its first issue appearing on June 17, 1918; The Ledger remained a separate morning and Sunday paper.

In October 1985, Sacramento-based McClatchy Newspapers reached an agreement with the Baker family to purchase the Tribune Publishing Company's newspaper assets from them for an estimated $112 million, with the transaction completed on August 1, 1986; Viacom purchased the remaining assets, including KNBQ, at the same time.

[10] The newspaper, alongside sister publication The Olympian, was printed at a plant in Tacoma until February 3, 2019.

[12] Harriet Hall criticized the News Tribune in Skeptical Inquirer in 2019 for its acceptance of advertisements for health-related products that imitated the presentation of real articles with only a small disclaimer.