The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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November 25, 2014 front page of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
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| Format | Compact (March 23, 2009) |
| Owner(s) | Lee Enterprises |
| Publisher | Ray Farris |
| Editor | Gilbert Bailon |
| Founded | December 12, 1878 by Joseph Pulitzer |
| Headquarters | 900 North Tucker Boulevard St. Louis, Missouri 63101 United States |
| Circulation | 137,380 Daily 223,826 Sunday (March 2014) |
| ISSN | 1930-9600 |
| OCLC number | 1764810 |
| Website | www |
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is the major regional newspaper in St. Louis, in the U.S. state of Missouri, serving Greater St. Louis. It is the only remaining printed daily newspaper in the city. It is the fifth-largest newspaper in the midwestern United States, and is the 26th-largest newspaper in the U.S. According to its masthead, the publication has received eighteen Pulitzer Prizes.
The paper is owned by Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa, which purchased Pulitzer, Inc. in 2005 in a cash deal valued at $1.46 billion.
On April 10, 1907, Pulitzer wrote what became known as the paper's platform:
I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
In 1878, Joseph Pulitzer purchased the bankrupt St. Louis Dispatch at a public auction and merged it with the St. Louis Evening Post to create the St. Louis Post and Dispatch, whose title was soon shortened to its current form. He appointed John A. Cockerill as the managing editor. Its first edition, 4,020 copies of four pages each, appeared on December 12, 1878.
In 1882, James Overton Broadhead ran for US Congress against John Glover. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, at Cockerill's direction, ran a number of articles questioning Broadhead's role in a lawsuit between a gaslight company and the city; Broadhead never responded to the charges. Broadhead's friend and law partner, Alonzo W. Slayback, publicly defended Broadhead, asserting that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was nothing more than a "blackmailing sheet." The next day, 13 Oct 1882, Cockerill re-ran an offensive "card" by John Glover that the paper had published the prior November (11 Nov 1881). Incensed, Slayback barged into Cockerill's offices at the paper demanding an apology. Cockerill shot and killed Slayback; he claimed self-defense, and a pistol was allegedly found on Slayback's body. A grand jury refused to indict Cockerill for murder, but the economic consequences for the paper were severe. Therefore, in May 1883, Pulitzer sent Cockerill to New York to manage the New York World for him.
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