Under editor Roy A. Roberts, the paper was an avowed Republican organ, particularly aimed at local politician Harry S. Truman. Truman returned the paper's hatred.
The Star was so strong for the Republicans that the news of its first Pulitzer Prize in 1947 was given only four paragraphs. The prize-winning stories revealed the Republican National Chairman as a crook. The paper won three more Pulitzer Prizes in the 1980s under Publisher James E. Hale.
A young Ernest Hemingway was a reporter for the Star from October, 1916 to April 1917. Though his time on the paper was brief, Hemingway credited Star editor, C.G. "Pete" Wellington, with changing a wordy high-schooler's writing style into clear, provocative English. Throughout his lifetime he referred to this admonition from the Star's style guide:
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Country musician Roger Miller had a 1968 hit called "Kansas City Star" about a local television personality who would rather stay home than become a bigger star elsewhere: