chicagotribune.com

Readiness by lane

Green: chicagotribune.com. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for chicagotribune.com

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Strict-Transport-Security header.

   Why it matters: HSTS tells browsers to use HTTPS for your host on every later visit, which removes the window where a first HTTP request can be intercepted.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   35% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 52 images and none used loading="lazy".

   What to do: Add loading="lazy" to images below the fold. Do not lazy-load the main hero image, because that delays the largest visible element.

   On WordPress: WordPress has added loading="lazy" to images by default since 5.5; check that your theme or a plugin has not removed it.

   72% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 16 external scripts without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   On WordPress: Since WordPress 6.3, scripts can be registered with a defer or async loading strategy.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   Framing restricted

   Observed: The homepage did not send frame-ancestors or X-Frame-Options, so other sites may frame it.

   What to do: Send Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' (or a list of trusted origins). X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN covers older browsers.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

What chicagotribune.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=reject.37% of peers
• Modern image formats in useWebP or AVIF images detected.44% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.chicagotribune.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-12-03

Platform or framework

WordPress

DNS operators

Amazon Route 53

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

315 KB, br

Images on homepage

52 (jpg 24, png 3, webp 1)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other News & Media sites

• blic.rs70
• bnnbloomberg.ca70
• bozy.com70
• cinematoday.jp70
• cnbcindonesia.com70

News & Media readiness benchmark