Greeley had a very clear idea of the kind of daily paper that he wanted to edit. In a letter to Weed in January, 1841, he said: “As for the country press, two-thirds of it is a nuisance and a positive curse — a mere mouthpiece for demagogues who are ravenous for spoils.... What good have such papers as [naming some] and many more of that stamp, done us? . . . I do believe they are all a positive failure — that any paper in bad or injudicious hands is so.” His purpose in publishing the Tribune is thus set forth in his Busy Life: “My leading idea was the establishment of a journal removed alike from servile partizanship on the one hand, and from gagging, mincing neutrality on the other.”
The rivalry that he had to face may be understood from the following list of newspapers published in New York city in November, 1842, with their estimated circulation, as given in Hudson's Journalism in the United States:
| Cash | Papers | Circulation |
| Herald, | 2 cents | 15,000 |
| Sun, | 1 cent | 20,000 |
| Aurora, | 2 cents | 5,000 |
| Morning Post, | 2 cents | 3,000 |
| Plebeian, | 2 cents | 2,000 |
| Chronicle, | 1 cent | 5,000 |
| Tribune, | 2 cents | 9,500 |
| Union, | 2 cents | 1,000 |
| Tattler, | 1 cent | 2,000 |
| 62,500 | ||
