Newspapers

Newspapers and Clippings in the Missouri Valley Room

One of the unique resources in the Missouri Valley Room is the extensive collection of newspaper articles selectively chosen from Kansas City’s major metropolitan dailies of the twentieth century. These cover topics of local and regional interest. Arranged by subject and on microfilm, articles can be searched in the 43-volume index in the Missouri Valley Room.

This is the only major index in Kansas City for The Kansas City Star/Times and some Journal Post issues prior to 1991.

The Star (along with the Times archives) are available via several databases, including a searchable archive of the full run of both papers. With your KCPL library card and pin number, you can access these database from home.

Early Kansas City area newspapers, such as The Evening and Morning Star, the Kansas City Enterprise, Westport (Border Star), Liberty Tribune, and others are available on microfilm.

The Kansas City Call is also available online, with almost complete coverage dating back to 1919. You can access this database from home with your KCPL library card number and PIN.

Runs of the major local newspapers, like the Journal-Post, The Kansas City Star and Times, and The Call, may be found in the Reference Department at Central Library.

Other Missouri and Kansas Newspaper Resources

LaBudde Special Collections at UMKC has digitized the first 22 issues of The Pitch (originally called the Penny Pitch).

The Library of Congress's “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” contains hundreds of American newspapers from 1860 to 1922. The site also hosts a directory of newspapers from 1690 with holdings information and what libraries have the issues. To search the text and images for Kansas, click here and for Missouri, click here. This includes the Kansas City Daily Journal, 1895-1897, and the Kansas City Journal, 1890 and 1897-1898. In the Directory, among others, are Jackson County, Missouri; Clay County, Missouri; and Wyandotte, Kansas.

Some historic newspapers have been digitized by the University of Missouri, including the Liberty Tribune from the Missouri Valley Room collection. The University's historic newspaper project is now part of Missouri Digital Heritage.

The State Historical Society of Missouri has an extensive collection of Missouri newspapers including some indexing online and a list of those they hold on microfilm.