In 1919-1926 he was the chief of the "Chicago Tribune's" foreign service, and editor of the paper's Paris edition. He gained fame for his coverage of wars and famines in Poland, Russia and Morocco. He was fired in 1926, started to write novels, and became a radio commentator for NBC. He narrated newsreels, for which he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He also narrated Vitaphone's "Your True Adventures" series of short films, which began as a radio program in which Gibbons paid twenty-five dollars for the best story submitted by a listener. In 1927 he wrote a biography of the Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) titled "The Red Knight of Germany". He also wrote the speculative fiction novel "The Red Napoleon" in 1929. Gibbons was the narrator for the documentary film "With Byrd at the South Pole" (1930). In 1929, he had his own half-hour radio program heard Wednesday nights on the NBC Red Network at 10:30. Competition from Paul Whiteman's show on CBS Radio, however, brought Gibbons' show to an end by March 1930.