Des Moines Register
Originally founded in 1849 as The Iowa Star, the Des Moines Register serves as Iowa’s flagship newspaper, founded under its current title through mergers in the early 1900s under the leadership of Gardner Cowles Sr., a banker in Des Moines, Iowa’s state capital and largest city. Gannett acquired the publication in 1985 amid declining revenues. The daily maintains outsized political influence through its Iowa Poll and first-in-the-nation caucus coverage of the US presidential elections — earning it national attention in the political cycle. The newspaper has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting, though circulation has declined significantly from its mid-20th century peak of nearly 250,000 daily readers.
