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Daily Eagle newspaper
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Kansas Memory Blog
Search the Daily Eagle newspaper and related titles from 1884-1890 on Chronicling America. Established as the first daily newspaper in Wichita to carry the Eagle name, the Daily Eagle printed four pages of news each day except Monday beginning on May 20, 1884. The Daily Eagle boasted of having “the largest circulation of any daily paper in southwestern Kansas.” Although the Daily Eagle
only produced a mere 17 issues, its name remains synonymous with its
successors, as well as with the city itself. On June 8, 1884, the Daily Eagle became the Whichita Daily Eagle, which circulated under that name until August 18, 1886, when it was changed simply to the Wichita Eagle.
The publication schedule remained the same, but the size of each issue
fluctuated between four, six, and eight pages and frequently included
supplements. In 1888, the Eagle began routinely publishing a larger, 12-page Sunday edition reaching an additional 1,000 readers each week.
Marshall M. Murdock (1837-1908), a man recognized for his progressive ideas, worked as the editor and publisher of the Eagle,
assisted by his younger brother and business manager, Roland P. Murdock
(1843-1906). The elder Murdock, commonly known as “Marsh,” had first
established the weekly Wichita City Eagle
in 1872 and remained with the paper through all its title changes until
his retirement in 1906. Murdock believed a strong daily newspaper
supporting local and regional commercial interests would help Wichita
“not only to be the city of this greatest of great valleys, but
possibly, even probably, the city of the State of Kansas.”
During its short tenure, the Daily Eagle reported on the
1884 Republican National Convention and bore witness to the decline and
collapse of the Greenback Party. From its first issue on June 8, 1884,
the Wichita Daily Eagle embraced some of the latest
formatting changes in the newspaper industry, explaining that “such a
thing is unprecedented in American journalism – a border town with a
nine-column daily.” On July 20, 1886, the Eagle began
publication as an eight-page newspaper that “suitable machinery could be
manufactured to order.” It claimed to be the first newspaper ever to be
“printed on a power press in this valley and its presses the first to
run by steam.” The Eagle witnessed the activities of the
temperance movement, as well as the success of the railroads and the
corresponding rise of Populism.
On March 18, 1890, the title reverted to the Wichita Daily Eagle, although its editors, affiliation, and audience remained unchanged. These early renditions of the Eagle paved the way for numerous successors, including the Wichita Eagle we know and read today.Search the Daily Eagle newspaper and related titles from 1884-1890 on Chronicling America.