Grumman has been a member of the Chicago Tribune 's editorial board since 2000, where she has written primarily about education, juvenile justice, social issues, state issues, and the death penalty. She won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for editorials about how to reform Illinois' system of capital punishment. Prior to becoming a member of the editorial board, Grumman spent six years as a metropolitan, state government, and Internet reporter for the Tribune . She worked as a news and features reporter at the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a stringer for the Washington Post in Beijing, China in the aftermath of the student democracy movement in 1989, and as a reporter at the Daily Southtown in Chicago.

Listen to Grumman describe how she worked with Banchero in an unofficial capacity.