About Us

Greater Kansas City Community Newspaper Group

A Brief History

The Greater Kansas City Community Newspaper Group has a rich history of community journalism rivaled by few community newspaper groups anywhere in the country. The group consists of three united, but distinct divisions:

• The Johnson County group, consisting of The Overland Park Sun, Blue Valley Sun, Shawnee Sun, Lenexa Sun, Northeast Johnson County Sun, and Wednesday Sun.
• The Northland group, Sun Tribune Newspapers, consisting of the storied Liberty Tribune, Platte County Sun Gazette, Clay County Sun Tribune, Raytown Tribune, The Kearney Courier and The Smithville Herald.
• The Miami County group, consisting of the Miami County Republic, Louisburg Herald and the Osawatomie Graphic.

The group is owned by News-Press & Gazette company based in St. Joseph, Mo. Publisher Kraig Cawley leads the 205,000-circulation Greater Kansas City Community Newspaper Group.

The following is a brief history of each division

The Johnson County Group

In 1950, Stan and Shirley Rose identified the need for a community newspaper in the Prairie Village area of Johnson County and founded The Prairie Scout.

The publication covered community news topics and included  Memo, a long-running, Page One column written by Stan that gave his views about civic issues, including his advocacy for The Mothers March on Polio. Sometimes the opinion took up a full column, sometimes just a few inches, as when he stated Jan. 21, 1958, "Fine thing. Had to cut ourselves short to make room for a news item. These slim January issues!"

The Roses expanded from the original publication to publish several newspapers countywide and the company became known as Sun Newspapers. With the help of their son, Steve Rose, the newspapers continued to evolve and in Steve became Sun president and chief executive officer in 1977.

Continuing to grow and change, Sun Newspapers became Sun Publications to reflect the diversity of products and in 1983 the company purchased the 63-year-old Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.

Steve purchased the year-old Health Care Times and relaunched the publication under the new name, The Nursing News, on Sept. 20, 1993.

The next major change came in 1998 when Steve purchased two newspaper groups in Missouri's Clay and Platte counties, the News Publications group and the Sun-Chronicle group. He combined the two groups into one that became known as Sun Publications of the Northland.

Less than a year later, Steve sold Sun Publications. Then, after going through different corporate owners, the newspaper group again became family-owned in 2005 when purchased by the News-Press & Gazette Co. of St. Joseph, Mo.

The Northland Group

The storied history of Sun Tribune Newspapers began, surprisingly, not with the group's oldest newspaper, the Liberty Tribune, but with an even older publication, the Western Journal, published by William Ridenbaugh.

Ridenbaugh had the distinction of being the only Liberty publisher of three different papers. He started the Journal on Jan. 7, 1842, under the motto, "The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man." The paper carried typical fare for the period, mostly announcements from other papers about what occurred overseas and in other states, but also bits of local news, such as Alvin Lightburne announcing a meeting of the Clay County Temperance Society. The paper endorsed Henry Clay for president.

For reasons known only to history, but likely economic, less than a year after starting the Western Journal, Ridenbaugh's name appeared on a new, different Liberty paper, The Liberty Banner, as publisher with T.W.W. De Courcy as editor. The publication date is April 17, 1843. This pro-states rights paper contained the earliest known advertisement for a slave sale in Liberty:  The undersigned will expose to public sale, a likely Negro Girl, 28 years old, during Circuit Court to the highest bidder. Thos. Arnold. The March 22 issue of the pro-Democrat paper slammed the Whigs: "That they advocate no principle which has not in its origins the accumulation of dollars and cents, at the expense of patriotism, and the welfare& " of public institutions.

Again for reasons lost to history, Ridenbaugh's name appeared on the name of yet another Liberty paper, the Western Pioneer, first published in June 1844 in Liberty. The paper backed James Polk for president. But the Banner appears to have lasted less than a year and Ridenbaugh put down his quill and left, which ended his publishing career affiliation with Liberty. Or did it?

In the meantime, a key member of today's Sun Tribune Newspapers, a Whig paper called the Liberty Weekly Tribune, debuted April 4, 1846.

After years of papers being unable to last in competition against the Tribune, The Liberty Advance began publishing Feb. 4, 1875, and lasted several decades. In a case, perhaps, of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," Irving Gilmer, owner of the Liberty Tribune, bought the Liberty Advance and continued to publish both papers under their original names, but on different days. A decade later, Gilmore sold both papers April 19, 1929 - six months before the stock market crash ushered in the Great Depression. In addition to personnel changes in the years that followed at the Advance-Tribune, one other change occurred - on Jan. 4, 1960, just a month short of its 85th anniversary, the Tribune dropped the Advance name and only the Liberty Tribune remained.

In June 1961, Howard and Vivian O'Dell founded Liberty Shopper News. Another newspaper, Joe Wally's New Sun, began publishing in June 1969; the name would change to Sun-Chronicle. Wally retired and in 1988 sold the Sun-Chronicle to Wayne Valentine and several other business people.

At this time, the Liberty Tribune belonged to Townsend Communications Inc., which also published other papers in Clay and Platte counties, including the Press-Dispatch. The Liberty News, formerly the Shopper News, also published as part of a group, which included the Gladstone News, the Kansas City-North News and the Platte County Gazette. Likewise, the Sun-Chronicle distributed papers in Liberty, Gladstone, Kansas City North and Platte County.

Northland publishing began a dramatic change in January 1998 when Steve Rose, owner of Sun Publications in Overland Park, Kan., bought the Liberty News and Sun-Chronicle groups. The combined newspaper groups became known as Sun Publications of the Northland and printed the Liberty Sun-News, Gladstone Sun-News, Northland Sun-News and the Platte County Sun-Gazette.

Over the next few years, the News-Press & Gazette Co. of St. Joseph, Mo., purchased Townsend Communications, The Kearney Courier and The Smithville Herald, and came into direct competition with Sun Publications of the Northland. The decision by NPG to also purchase Sun Publications in 2005 brought Ridenbaugh's affiliation with the Northland and specifically Liberty full circle.

After Ridenbaugh put down his quill and left Liberty in 1844, he went to St. Joseph and on April 25, 1845, he began publishing the St. Joseph Gazette. The Gazette merged with a competitor years later and today lives on as the St. Joseph News-Press - flagship of the parent company of Sun Tribune Newspapers including a paper in the city where he started, the Liberty Tribune.

The Miami County Group

Radical Republicans led the land when John McReynolds and Basil M. Simpson published the first Miami County Republican newspaper Aug. 18, 1866, in Paola. The Republican started as a Saturday publication and trumpeted the politics of its name.

Capt. Leslie J. Perry started a rival publication, The Kansas Spirit, in 1871 in Paola.

'County' was dropped from the Republican's flag and The Kansas Spirit became the Western Spirit to avoid confusion with a similarly named newspaper in Lawrence.

The Paola newspapers competed for readers and advertisers until 1956 when they merged to form the Miami County Publishing Co.

Drew McLaughlin Sr. bought the Miami Republican in 1920. Drew McLaughlin Jr. merged the paper with the Western Spirit, then-owned by former Paola banker L.M. 'Mike' Schwartz.

One staff produced both papers under the different names until 1991 when the papers became the Miami County Republic under the direction of editor and publisher Phil McLaughlin, the third generation of his family to lead the newspaper.

In 1998, the Republic merged with two other county newspapers - the Osawatomie Graphic and the Louisburg Herald. The newspapers remain separate, though sharing news and advertising.

The McLaughlins sold the Republic, Graphic and Herald in October 2004 to NPG Newspapers, a family-owned media company based in St. Joseph, Mo.

Jack 'Miles' Ventimiglia wrote the Northland and Johnson County sections of this overview; the Republic provided information for the section on Miami County.