The first of five children of Edward Thomas Gibbons and Emma Theresa Phillips, he attended Gonzaga College High School, and later Georgetown University, from which he was expelled. He began as a police reporter on the "Minneapolis Daily News." He moved to the "Minneapolis Tribune" in 1907, and to the "Chicago Tribune" in 1912. He became well known for covering the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916, and for reporting on the 1917 torpedoing of the British ship RMS "Laconia", on which he was a passenger.