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Missouri Digital Newspaper Project
Early Journalism in Missouri
The territory of Upper Louisiana was nearly devoid of newspapermen in the early 1800s. Aside from relatively established communities on the Mississippi River, such as St. Louis, the area remained largely wilderness. Once congressional designation of St. Louis as the governmental headquarters was given in 1805, the necessary elements for newspapers were evident – “government, which needed to publicize its laws; politicians, who wished to crystallize public opinion; a literate citizenry, who sought information and intelligence; and the printer–editor motivated by an amalgam of altruism and political and economic advantages.”
Missouri’s first printer–editor was an Irish immigrant named Joseph Charless who was encouraged to come to St. Louis by Territorial Governor Meriwether Lewis. Originally named the Missouri Gazette and Louisiana Advertiser, the paper’s name was soon changed to the St. Louis Missouri Gazette. Although the first two issues of the Gazette have not been located, the third, dated July 26, 1808, begins the formal record, and confirms that July 12, 1808 is the date of the first North American paper published west of the Mississippi River. The Gazette remains an important record of the territorial period, detailing such issues as Indian troubles and treaties, the advent of steamboats to St. Louis, and the election of delegates to Congress.
Charless faced the same odds that plagued all pioneer printers to follow, including shortages of paper, unpaid subscriptions, and irregularities in mail service. He also borrowed trouble by arousing opposition with personal journalism illustrative of the times; writing often about the evils of slavery. The first to answer the Gazette’s platform was Thomas Hart Benton with the Western Journal (subsequently the Enquirer). Benton’s pro–slavery position, and published squabbles with Charless closely mirrored political debate of the time. The issues surrounding slavery would appear regularly in print over the next fifty years.
As the Missouri frontier grew in population, newspapermen spread west. The Missouri Intelligencer and Boon’s Lick Advertiser, the first “wilderness” paper west of the Mississippi, was started by Nathaniel Patten in 1819 at Franklin. The paper promoted the Boon’s Lick territory while honestly reporting the many privations faced by settlers. Similar to St. Louis papers, the Intelligencer was printed on a Ramage press, tabloid sized, with four pages of five columns to a page.
Missouri’s entry to the Union (1820–1821) brought more newspapers, especially in St. Louis. The compromise settlement, heavily detailed in the papers, allowed slavery in Missouri but excluded its spread into territories west and north. The Enquirer published Missouri’s first “extra” on March 25, 1820, to announce the good news of statehood, but saved the more difficult arguments over slavery for another day.
Additional “firsts” include Missouri’s first daily paper, the Daily Evening Herald and Commercial Advertiser, in St. Louis, 1835 – which was short lived. Editor Nathaniel Patten offered a tri–weekly in 1836 titled St. Louis Memoir: A Journal of Literature, Commerce, Agriculture and the Arts, but it too failed. The first Sunday paper, the St. Louis Reveille, appeared in 1844.
During the 1850s, the practice of mixing opinion with news increased as Democrats, Whigs, and newly formed Republicans sought the loudest voice in print. Confused and divided, Missourians looked to the 1860 presidential election for answers: “This was to be the climax after years of debates over the role of the federal government in relation to the states. It was not unusual to see editors switching from party to party as the breech widened.” Party alliance could be seen not only in editorials but in the names of the papers, themselves. The St. Louis Missouri Republican squared off with the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, and the match did not go unnoticed by Abraham Lincoln himself, who stated it reminded him of a fight he witnessed on the courthouse lawn in Springfield, Illinois: “Two men engaged in a rough and tumble bout. They clinched and rolled and tumbled all over the courthouse yard. It was such an evenly matched fight that the circle of bystanders could not tell which man was getting the worst of it.” Ultimately, Lincoln received the worst of it as Missourians voted Douglas the narrow winner with 58,801 over Bell’s 58,372; Breckinridge gained 31,317; and Lincoln only 17,028.
By the official start of the war, Missouri newspapers appeared largely as they had in 1808: headlines were rare and one–line descriptions such as “Awful Calamity” overused. The first words of stories were capitalized to indicate an article’s beginning. Advertisements received front page advantage, and a large amount of text was pulled from other papers. During political contests, the majority of space was used for opinionated letters from the editor, or from a supporter of the editor. The end of the War brought a flurry of activity as fifty new papers emerged in 1865. Many pro–Confederate publishers came back to Missouri, and soon radical presses on both sides were printing in response to Reconstruction.
In 1867, Missouri journalists met in St. Louis to organize professionally through the Missouri Editors’ and Publishers’ Association. The group’s tenets included promise of an annual meeting, membership dues of $1 (to support future orphans and widows of deceased members), and firm language of what it would not be: “The association shall not have power to regulate prices of advertising, or in any way interfere with the business of publishers.” During early years, the group proved more social than business–minded, but by 1880, a cohesive membership had been formed.
By the 1879 meeting, the (then named) Missouri Press Association (MPA) had become an important alliance among journalists, historians, and academics. William F. Switzler of the Columbia Missouri Statesman offered these comments to the convention: “The State Press and the State University are powers with the people. Each is an important factor of their freedom and prosperity, and of their future greatness and glory. Each is an educator – the Press directly – of those who now govern the country, the University primarily of those who will hereafter govern it.”
At the 1900 benchmark, the Missouri press was strong, growing, better organized, and well into defining its shift from personal journalism to real news. Papers sought to cover not only community and regional affairs, but ideas and exchanges from across the country. Approximately 46% defined their bent as Democrat; 26% applied the label of Republican; and those that classified themselves as Independent was on the rise. There was a move toward more evening papers with 61 afternoon dailies. In 1895, 15 dailies contracted with the Associated Press, while a few continued with the United Press, which still offered German language pieces. Circulation depended on the size and composition of the community; the Rutledge Record had 264 regular takers, and the St. Louis Post–Dispatch week–day edition numbered 94,000, with Sundays as high as 140,000.
In 1900, nearly 900 newspaper publications appeared regularly in Missouri. Half were constructed largely from ready print, which normally filled pages two and three of a four–page paper, or pages two, three, six, and seven of an eight–page publication. In 1890, the Kellogg Newspaper Company (later affiliated with the Western Newspaper Union), supplied approximately 300 Missouri papers with patents according to their preference – Republican, Democrat, or Populist’ politics. The Columbia Herald took a turn at developing and providing ready print, and offered to customize services with advertisements as well. Readers often did not know which text was ready print and what had been developed by the local publisher. This practice of supplying content without label continued well into the twentieth century.
