Chicago Tribune Scraper

Extract full article text or the top headlines from the Chicago Tribune — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required
• Full article text included, not just a summary — headline, byline, section, keywords, and publish/update dates
• Also fetches the current top headlines from the homepage without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode to get the current top headlines automatically.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out the full text and every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads the homepage and returns the current top-story headlines.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/08/23/cps-budget-problems-back-to-school/"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the current top headlines.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. Default 10, max 30.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL (truncated here for readability):

{
  "_input": "https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/08/23/cps-budget-problems-back-to-school/",
  "_source": "S1-html",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T23:06:36Z",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "headline": "CPS budget uncertainty looms as students head back to school",
  "articleBody": "When teacher assistant Jared Edwards was laid off at Curtis Elementary in Roseland this summer, it was the second consecutive year his position had been cut ...",
  "articleSection": "Education",
  "creator": ["Kate Armanini"],
  "datePublished": "2026-08-23T...",
  "isAccessibleForFree": false
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline:

{
  "_input": "latest",
  "_source": "S2-homepage",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T23:06:24Z",
  "title": "CPS budget uncertainty looms as students head back to school",
  "link": "https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/08/23/cps-budget-problems-back-to-school/"
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL you requested, or "latest", for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record.
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
headline / title	string	Article headline.
articleBody	string	Full plain-text article content (article mode only).
creator / author	array / object	Byline (article mode only).
articleSection	string	Section name (article mode only).
isAccessibleForFree	boolean	Publisher's own metering flag — false does not mean the text is truncated; full text is present regardless (see CRAWLING_METHOD.md).
link	string	The article URL (latest mode).

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed article).

Notes

Latest mode returns the current homepage's top-story headlines rather than a strict reverse-chronological feed — the Chicago Tribune's RSS/sitemap endpoints are gated behind a bot-verification challenge that isn't required to reach individual articles. See CRAWLING_METHOD.md for details.