St. Louis Post-Dispatch

===Early years===
In 1878, Pulitzer purchased the bankrupt ''St. Louis Dispatch'' at a public auction<ref>{{cite web|last1=Jolley|first1=Laura R.|title=Joseph Pulitzer|url=http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/p/pulitzer/|website=Missouri Biographies for Students|access-date=October 29, 2015|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151017045715/http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/p/pulitzer/|archive-date=October 17, 2015}}</ref> and merged it with the ''St. Louis Evening Post'' to create the ''St. Louis Post and Dispatch'', whose title was soon shortened to its current form. He appointed John A. Cockerill as the managing editor. Its first edition, 4,020 copies of four pages each, appeared on December 12, 1878.
[[File:St. Louis Post- Dispatch ad - "Fighting for freedom," Independence day pageant; (IA fightingforfreed00stev) (page 12 crop).jpg|thumb|377x377px|St. Louis Post- Dispatch ad in 1918]]
In 1882, [[James Overton Broadhead]] ran for Congress against John Glover. The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'', at Cockerill's direction, ran a number of articles questioning Broadhead's role in a lawsuit between a gaslight company and the city; Broadhead never responded to the charges.<ref>Shepley, Carol Ferring. <u>Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery</u>.  Missouri History Museum: St. Louis, 2008.</ref>  Broadhead's friend and law partner, [[Alonzo W. Slayback]], publicly defended Broadhead, asserting that the ''Post-Dispatch'' was nothing more than a "blackmailing sheet."  The next day, October 13, 1882, Cockerill re-ran an offensive "card" by John Glover that the paper had published the prior year (November 11, 1881). Incensed, Slayback barged into Cockerill's offices at the paper demanding an apology. Cockerill shot and killed Slayback; he claimed self-defense, and a pistol was allegedly found on Slayback's body. A grand jury refused to indict Cockerill for murder, but the economic consequences for the paper were severe. In May 1883, Pulitzer sent Cockerill to New York to manage the ''[[New York World]]'' for him.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/slayback.htm |title=Col. Alonzo W. Slayback |access-date=2013-07-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120315055555/http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/slayback.htm |archive-date=2012-03-15 }}</ref>

The ''Post-Dispatch'' was one of the first daily newspapers to print a [[comics]] section in color, on the back page of the features section, styled the "Everyday Magazine."{{Citation needed|date=February 2011}}