Missouri

The Missouri Gazette, published in St. Louis in 1808 by the politically independent and controversial Joseph Charless, was the state's first newspaper; issued to 174 subscribers, the paper was partly in French. In 1815, a group of Charless's enemies raised funds to establish a rival paper, the Western Journal, and brought in Joshua Norvell from Nashville to edit it. By 1820 there were five newspapers in Missouri.

Since that time, many Missouri newspapermen have achieved national recognition. The best known is Sam Clemens (later Mark Twain), who started out as a "printer's devil" in Hannibal at the age of 13. Hungarian-born Joseph Pulitzer began his journalistic career in 1868 as a reporter for a German-language daily in St. Louis. Pulitzer created the St. Louis Post–Dispatch from the merger of two defunct newspapers in 1878, endowed the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City, and established by bequest the Pulitzer Prizes, which annually honor journalistic and artistic achievement.

As of 2002 there were 13 morning newspapers, 30 evening dailies, and 23 Sunday papers. The following table shows Missouri's leading dailies with their approximate 2002 circulations:

Periodicals include the St. Louis-based Sporting News, the bimonthly "bible" of baseball fans; VFW Magazine, put out monthly in Kansas City by the Veterans of Foreign Wars; and the Missouri Historical View, a quarterly with offices in Columbia.