Throughout 1941, newspapers in Northwestern Missouri struggled between reporting war news and local news. In the end, they ended up compromising and trying to do both. This resulted in a sharp and often strange contrast between everyday life in Missouri and the intense warfare in Europe.

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In the 1940s, the only ways to get news were radio broadcasts and   local daily or weekly newspapers. While daily papers attempted to keep up with war news, many weekly papers did not and instead focused primarily on local stories.