On January 1, 1871, the Columbia, Missouri Herald newspaper was first published by Edwin William Stephens. Less than a year earlier, the twenty-one-year-old Stephens had purchased a half stake in the fledgling Boone County Journal, which he renamed; by 1873 he would acquire full ownership. The Herald would develop a national reputation as the “Model American Weekly.” In 1889, Walter Williams was hired as editor, and in 1892 Stephens erected a new headquarters building and printing plant at the corner of Hitt and Broadway which still stands in 2022. In addition to the newspapers, thousands of books would be printed and bound here in the ensuing decades. In 1904, it was Columbia’s largest commercial enterprise and employed one hundred people. Stephens and Williams shared a lifelong commitment to education, and a belief that journalists should be professionally trained. Their long devotion to these journalistic high ideals would, in 1908, lead to the creation of the world’s first degree-granting School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, with Williams as its first dean.

Sources

• Switzler, William F. (1882). History of Boone County. St. Louis, Missouri: Western Historical Company. p.813-814. OCLC 2881554.

• Stephens, E.W.; Williams, Walter (1895). Columbia Missouri Herald Historical Edition: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, April 1870-1895. Columbia, Missouri: Press of E.W. Stephens. p.7-8.

• Williams, Walter (1904). The State of Missouri: An Autobiography. Columbia, Missouri: Press of E.W. Stephens. p.335. OCLC 373059.

• Farrar, Ronald T. (2013). A Creed for My Profession: Walter Williams, Journalist to the World. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. p.57-152. ISBN 9780826260413.

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