page_title: McCook Gazette
section_title: 1930–1960
hierarchical_section_title: McCook Gazette / 1930–1960
caption_attribution_description: English: Delivery car "Newsboy IV" belonging to McCook Daily Gazette. The image above "McCook" on the car's door is the original "Newsboy" airplane.
context_page_description: The McCook Daily Gazette is a newspaper published in the city of McCook, in the southwestern part of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It serves southwestern Nebraska and northwestern Kansas. The newspaper is issued five days a week, Monday through Friday afternoons. As of 2011, it had a circulation of 4,564.
  The paper was founded in 1911 by Harry D. Strunk and Burris H. Stewart as the Red Willow Gazette. Thirteen years later, under Strunk's editorship, it became a daily and changed its name to the McCook Daily Gazette. In 1929, the newspaper became one of the first in the world to be delivered regularly by air: for several months its airplane, the Newsboy, flew a daily route, dropping bundles of newspapers to carriers in outlying towns. An image of the Newsboy still decorates the paper's nameplate.
  Strunk published the Gazette until his death in 1960, when he was succeeded by his son Allen Strunk. In 1986, the paper was acquired by Gozia-Driver Media, which was later re-incorporated as US Media Group. In 1997, the Gazette was sold to Rust Communications.
context_section_description: The end of the aviation experiment forced the Gazette to return to ground-based delivery.  Newspapers for outlying communities were transported there on commercial buses running through McCook; local carriers picked them up at their towns' bus stops.  Same-day delivery was no longer possible for subscribers in communities off the main highways; they had to settle for next-day delivery.
  In 1934, the Gazette absorbed the South Side Sentinel of Marion, Nebraska.  In 1936, it acquired the triweekly McCook Tribune, at which Strunk had worked on his arrival in McCook.  Later, in 1957, it absorbed the Red Willow County Reporter.
  On the eve of World War II, the Gazette acquired one of the last teletypesetters manufactured.  With this machine, the paper could be produced with only two printers; this allowed it to remain in production at a time when Linotype operators were in short supply because of the war.
  The Gazette made a second attempt at air delivery in 1950.  For four years, a Cessna 120 was used to deliver papers to outlying communities.  The high cost of operating the airplane, and the increasing availability of good roads for ground delivery, ended the venture.  The plane was replaced by a fleet of small trucks and automobiles, all of which continued to bear the name Newsboy.
  After the Republican River flood of 1935, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a study of the river's watershed.  Released in 1940, it concluded that there were no good dam sites upstream from Republican City, Nebraska, where the Harlan County Dam is now located.  Since 112 deaths and the bulk of the property damage caused by the flood had occurred in the upper Republican valley, which includes McCook, the report led to dissatisfaction among residents of the area.  Strunk and three others formed the Republican Valley Conservation Association, which lobbied aggressively for the development of a flood-control program for the entire basin; the Gazette provided office space to the organization.  The RVCA's efforts led to the construction of a number of dams in the area: one on the Republican at Trenton, Nebraska, and several on tributaries of the river in Nebraska and Kansas.  One of the latter was built on Medicine Creek in Frontier County, Nebraska; the 1,850-acre (750 ha) reservoir behind it has been named Harry Strunk Lake.
caption: A Newsboy in 2011
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