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. History The paper's founder, Harry D. Strunk, was born in 1892 in Pawnee City, Nebraska. In 1906, at the age of 14, he was forced by family circumstances to quit school and go to work as a printer's devil (an apprentice) for the Pawnee City Republican. A year later, he moved to Fairbury, Nebraska, but at the age of 16, when the editor of the Republican fell ill, he returned to Pawnee City and published the newspaper for three months until the editor's recovery. Strunk continued to move from newspaper to newspaper; in 1909, at the age of 17, he was shop foreman of the Norton, Kansas Daily Telegram, overseeing ten typesetters. Later in 1909, Strunk set off for the West Coast. En route, he saw and responded to an advertisement seeking a printer for the weekly McCook Tribune. Nine months later, he and fellow Tribune employee Burris H. Stewart started their own job-printing shop, "with so few assets that they were forced to borrow money to buy ink". Six months later, in 1911, the two launched their own newspaper: the semi-weekly Red Willow Gazette, again with no assets and with heavy debts. Distressed by their financial situation, Stewart committed suicide on the day of the paper's second issue. Strunk persevered,