The Chicago Tribune editorial pages have been taking shots at Hillary Clinton for decades. That's four decades, seven years and 119 days, to be exact.

The Tribune's first broadside came June 3, 1969, after Hillary Rodham, a 21-year-old from northwest suburban Park Ridge, gained attention for a commencement speech at Wellesley College in Massachusetts that rebuked Sen. Edward Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican who was the Senate's only African-American.

Brooke spoke before Rodham at the event, urging moderation and "nonviolent political change" amid the tumult of the late '60s. In her memoir "Living History," Clinton recalled that Brooke's speech "sounded like a defense of President Nixon's policies, notable more for what it didn't say than what it did."

When it was her turn to speak after Brooke, the graduating senior ripped into the senator's address. "The entire tone of the speech was one that we found to be very discouraging," said Rodham, speaking as student government president. "There has been very little of the action promised by that rhetoric."

The Tribune wrote a news story headlined "Park Ridge Girl Raps Brooke." (Yes, she was called a "girl" even though she was 21.) That was followed by a Tribune editorial scolding her: "Miss Rodham's discourtesy to Sen. Brooke was unjustified."

The editorial noted that Rodham ended her speech with a French student slogan: "Be realistic. Demand the impossible." The Tribune added: "We are realistic enough to expect that youngsters of 21 and less who now find courtesy and patience and reliance on 'nonviolent political change' impossible for them will in a few years grow up enough so that they, too, in their maturity, will exemplify these badly needed virtues."

The news story and editorial were the second and third mentions of Hillary Rodham in the Tribune. The first was when she was named a National Merit semifinalist at Maine East High School. That 1964 article ran next to a story in which a union leader compared Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater to Adolf Hitler.

Chicago Tribune archives The first major mention of Donald Trump in the pages of the Chicago Tribune came in February 1979. Read the full story here. The first major mention of Donald Trump in the pages of the Chicago Tribune came in February 1979. Read the full story here. (Chicago Tribune archives) (Chicago Tribune archives)

Donald Trump's first mention in the Tribune came in 1975, when he purchased land in Manhattan. The second story, in 1979, likely pleased the brash young real estate tycoon. Headlined "Big deals are easy for top N.Y. broker," the story gushed: "He's only 32. He looks like a young college prof. Suddenly he has become New York real estate's big dealer."

The article and headline used the word "big" five times, with one appearance each by "bigger," "biggest," "massive" and "large."

The first Tribune mentions of the major third-party challengers are less massive. A 1994 article noted that Gary Johnson, now the Libertarian nominee, was "a multimillionaire contractor" running as a Republican for governor of New Mexico — a race that he would win. Green Party candidate Jill Stein was featured in a 2003 Tribune story about how people living alone used up a disproportionate share of resources. Stein, a Massachusetts physician, "said some novel solutions might include cohousing developments in which people retain privacy, but also share some common spaces."

mjacob@chicagotribune.com

Twitter: @MarkJacob16