The Kansas City Star is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. The Star is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and as the newspaper where a young Ernest Hemingway honed his writing style. The paper is the major newspaper of the Kansas City metropolitan area and has widespread circulation in western Missouri and eastern Kansas.
History
Nelson family ownership (1880–1926)
The paper, originally called The Kansas City Evening Star, was founded September 18, 1880, by William Rockhill Nelson and Samuel E. Morss. The two moved to Missouri after selling the newspaper that became the Fort Wayne News Sentinel (and earlier owned by Nelson's father) in Nelson's Indiana hometown, where Nelson was campaign manager in the unsuccessful presidential run of Samuel Tilden.
Morss quit the newspaper business within a year and a half because of ill health. At the time there were three daily competitors – the Evening Mail; The Kansas City Times; and the Kansas City Journal.
Competitor Times editor Eugene Field wrote this about the new newspaper:
Twinkle, twinkle, little Star
Bright and gossipy you are; We can daily hear you speak For a paltry dime a week.
Nelson's business strategy called for cheap advance subscriptions and an intention to be "absolutely independent in politics, aiming to deal by all men and all parties with impartiality and fearlessness.".
He purchased the Kansas City Evening Mail (and its Associated Press evening franchise) in 1882. The paper name was changed to The Kansas City Star in 1885. Nelson started the Weekly Kansas City Star in 1890 and the Sunday Kansas City Star in 1894. In 1901 Nelson also bought the morning paper The Kansas City Times (and its morning Associated Press franchise). Nelson announced the arrival of the "24 Hour Star."
In August 1902, future president Harry S. Truman worked in the mailroom for two weeks, making $7.00 the first week and $5.40 the second. In 1950, then-president Truman half joked in an unmailed letter to Star editor Roy Roberts, "If the Star is at all mentioned in history, it will be because the President [sic] of the U.S. worked there for a few weeks in 1901."
The paper was first printed on the second story of a three-story building at 407–409 Delaware. In 1881, it moved 14 W. 5th Street. In 1882, it moved to 115 W. 6th. In 1889, it moved to 804–806 Wyandotte. Sometime between 1896 and 1907, it was located at 1025–1031 Grand. In 1911 it moved into its Jarvis Hunt-designed building at 18th and Grand.
Nelson died in 1915. Nelson provided in his will that his newspaper was to support his wife and daughter and then be sold.
Ernest Hemingway was a reporter for the Star from October 1917 to April 1918. Hemingway credited Star editor C.G. "Pete" Wellington with changing a wordy high-schooler's writing style into clear, provocative English. Throughout his lifetime, he referred to this admonition from The Star Copy Style, the paper's style guide:
Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
Nelson's wife died in 1921; his daughter Laura Kirkwood died in a Baltimore hotel room in 1926 at the age of 43.
Employee ownership (1926–1977) Laura's husband Irwin Kirkwood, who was editor of the paper, led the employee purchase. Kirkwood in turn died of a heart attack in 1927 in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he had gone to sell thoroughbred horses. Stock in the company was then distributed among other employees.
Virtually all proceeds from the sale and remains of Nelson's $6 million personal fortune were donated to create the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on the site of Nelson's home, Oak Hall. Both papers were purchased by the employees in 1926 following the death of Nelson's daughter.
The Star enjoyed a pivotal role in American politics beginning in the late 1920s when Iowa-native Herbert Hoover was nominated at the 1928 Republican convention in Kansas City, and continuing through 1960 at the conclusion of the presidency of Kansas favorite Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Editor Roy A. Roberts (1887–1967) was to make the newspaper a major force in Kansas politics. Roberts joined the paper in 1909 and was picked by Nelson for the Washington bureau in 1915. Roberts became managing editor in 1928. He was instrumental in pushing Kansas Governor Alf Landon for the Republican nomination in 1936; Landon was defeated in the general election by Franklin D. Roosevelt.