The Des Moines Register is the daily morning newspaper of Des Moines, Iowa. History Early period The first newspaper in Des Moines was the Iowa Star. In July 1849, Barlow Granger began the paper in an abandoned log cabin by the junction of the Des Moines and Raccoon River. In 1854, The Star became the Iowa Statesman which was also a Democratic paper. In 1857, The Statesman became the Iowa State Journal, which published 3 times per week. In 1870, The Iowa Statesman became the Iowa State Leader as a Democratic newspaper, which competed with pro-Republican Iowa Daily State Register for the next 32 years. In 1902, George Roberts bought the Register and Leader and merged them into a morning newspaper. In 1903, Des Moines banker Gardner Cowles, Sr. purchased the Register and Leader. The name finally became The Des Moines Register in 1915. (Cowles also acquired the Des Moines Tribune in 1908. The Tribune, which merged with the rival Des Moines News in 1924 and the Des Moines Capital in 1927, served as the evening paper for the Des Moines area until it ended publication on September 25, 1982.) Under the ownership of the Cowles family, the Register became Iowa's largest and most influential newspaper, eventually adopting the slogan "The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon." Newspapers were distributed to all four corners of the state by train and later by truck as Iowa's highway system was improving. Nationwide development In 1906, the newspaper's first front-page editorial cartoon, illustrated by Jay Norwood Darling, was published; the tradition of front-page editorial cartoons continued until December 4, 2008 when 25-year veteran cartoonist Brian Duffy was let go in a round of staff cuts. The Register employed reporters in cities and towns throughout Iowa, and it covered national and international news stories from an Iowa perspective, even setting up its own news bureau in Washington, D.C. in 1933. During the 1960s, circulation of the Register peaked at nearly 250,000 for the daily edition and 500,000 for the Sunday edition–more than the population of Des Moines at the time. In 1935, the Register & Tribune Company founded radio station KRNT-AM, named after the newspapers' nickname, "the R 'n T." In 1955, the company, renamed Cowles Communications some years earlier, founded Des Moines' third television station, KRNT-TV, which was renamed KCCI after the radio station was sold in 1974. Cowles eventually acquired other newspapers, radio stations