Washington Missourian: Franklin County's Newspaper Since 1860
The Washington Missourian is a twice-weekly newspaper based in Washington, Missouri, serving Washington and all of Franklin County, in eastern Missouri. Published by Missourian Publishing Company and online at emissourian.com, the paper traces its founding to January 5, 1860, making it one of Missouri's oldest continuously published community newspapers. In addition to Washington, it covers the nearby Franklin County cities of Union, St. Clair and Pacific and the surrounding rural areas.
For most of the modern era the Missourian was a Miller family newspaper: James L. Miller Sr. purchased it in 1937 and built it into an award-winning paper, and three generations of his family ran it until June 2025, when the Miller family sold the paper to the Hoffmann Family of Companies and it became part of Hoffmann Media Group — a homecoming of sorts, since Hoffmann's founder, David Hoffmann, is a Washington native whose interest in newspapers began with the Missourian itself.
Overview
The Missourian describes itself as Franklin County's newspaper, and by the measures available it has earned the description: it has been characterised as the most read local paper inside Franklin County, with readership extending into St. Louis County communities such as Eureka. Its headquarters are at 6321 Bluff Road in Washington. Reference listings put its circulation at about 10,050, and a Reynolds Journalism Institute study of the paper found that its print and digital efforts together reached ninety-two percent of its market, in a county of more than 100,000 people.
The paper is published twice a week in print, while its website, emissourian.com, carries news continuously. Alongside the newspaper, Missourian Publishing Company has operated a substantial commercial printing division from the same Bluff Road plant — commercial printing accounted for about three-eighths of company revenues in the early 2010s — making the company one of Franklin County's significant employers as well as its news source.
History
The paper's lineage begins just before the Civil War. The Franklin County Gazette was founded on January 5, 1860. In April 1861, as the war began, its name was changed to the Franklin County News; in April 1867 it became the Franklin County Observer. That name lasted nearly sixty years, until August 1926, when the paper took the name it still carries: the Washington Missourian. Newspaper archives preserve the Missourian from 1869 onward in runs totalling more than thirty thousand pages, documenting Franklin County from Reconstruction through the twentieth century.
The struggling weekly that James L. Miller Sr. bought in 1937 bore little resemblance to the institution it became. Miller had arrived in the United States as a three-year-old immigrant through Ellis Island in 1901, served in the First World War, and worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and Times, crossing paths with figures such as Tom Pendergast and Harry Truman. In Washington he bought a paper with meagre and outdated equipment and rebuilt it — regarded as an independent thinker who gambled on new technology, he made the Missourian one of the first papers in Missouri to convert from hot-metal typesetting to offset printing, operating its own photo-engraving plant, and pioneered the wide use of local photographs by a weekly newspaper in the state.
The Miller Family
Three generations of the Miller family ran the Missourian from 1937 onward. James L. Miller Sr. was succeeded by his son, William L. Miller Sr., who worked at the paper for more than sixty-seven years before his retirement. The family's stewardship shaped a paper that won repeated awards for general excellence in reporting, photography and content, and that invested heavily in its printing plant, including an eighteen-unit Goss Urbanite press at its Bluff Road facility.
The Miller era reached a turbulent milestone in June 2020. William L. Miller Sr. stepped down on June 10, 2020, after facing backlash for publishing a racially insensitive political cartoon by Tom Stiglich; his daughters, Susan Miller Warden and Jeanne Miller Wood, had resigned as owners of the company in protest earlier that day. The paper continued under the next generation, with Bill Miller Jr. as publisher, until the family sold the Missourian in June 2025, ending eighty-eight years of Miller ownership.
Ownership
The Missourian is owned today by Hoffmann Media Group, part of the Hoffmann Family of Companies, following the Miller family's sale of the paper in June 2025. The buyer brought a personal connection few newspaper sales can match: David Hoffmann grew up in Washington, Missouri, and has recounted that when he was nine years old the local Missourian wrote a story about his Little League no-hitter and ran it with his picture — an experience he credits with sparking a lifelong attachment to his hometown paper, which he continued reading wherever he lived. Hoffmann, founder of the executive search firm DHR Global and of the Florida-based Hoffmann Family of Companies, has built a substantial newspaper portfolio and has spoken of local newspapers as a key part of the American fabric.
The ownership change also closed a circle in the paper's own business history: the Missourian Media Group became part of a Hoffmann media organisation that also operates publications in California, Colorado, Florida and Michigan, while the paper continues to publish from Washington under its historic name.
Coverage and Content
The Missourian's news report is Franklin County's: Washington city government, the Franklin County Commission, Union, St. Clair and Pacific, local courts and schools, business and development in a fast-growing county on the western edge of the St. Louis metropolitan area, and the Missouri River communities in between. Local news has been, in the company's own words, the heart and soul of the organisation since 1937, and the paper's early adoption of extensive local photography set a visual standard for its coverage that it maintains today.
Sports — a beat Hoffmann himself has singled out, lamenting the shrinking coverage of local athletes in American newspapers — schools, obituaries, records, opinion and community announcements fill out the twice-weekly print editions and the continuously updated website. The paper's commercial printing operation, meanwhile, prints for customers across the region from the Bluff Road plant.
Community Role
Few American newspapers are as intertwined with their hometown as the Missourian is with Washington. It has recorded Franklin County life since before the Civil War under its predecessor titles; it was rebuilt by an immigrant reporter who made it a technological pioneer among Missouri weeklies; and its connection to the community produced, in David Hoffmann, a reader whose boyhood appearance in its sports pages grew into a determination to own and preserve local newspapers. The Missourian Publishing Company's philosophy, as the company states it, has been to provide customers real value through quality products and service — a formula applied to both the newspaper and the printing plant that shares its roof.
The paper's public role is also measurable: the Reynolds Journalism Institute's study found the Missourian's combined print and digital audience reaching ninety-two percent of its market, a penetration few local media outlets anywhere can claim, built on the paper's reputation for general excellence in reporting, photography and content.
Print and Digital Presence
The Missourian is a twice-weekly print newspaper with a digital operation at emissourian.com that was an early and enthusiastic adopter among small papers: a Reynolds Journalism Institute profile described the paper pushing into nearly every new digital communication method of its day, from its website to Twitter to Pinterest, under the philosophy, as its advertising director put it, that if the paper didn't do it, somebody else would. Its leaders studied analytics to understand their digital audience and combined print and online reach in selling the paper to advertisers.
In print, the Bluff Road plant — anchored by its high-tech eighteen-unit Goss Urbanite press — long made the company a printing centre in its own right, taking on commercial work as other printers exited the business, even as the newspaper itself remained the company's public identity.
Audience and Reach
The Missourian's audience is Franklin County's more than 100,000 residents, concentrated in Washington, Union, Pacific and St. Clair, with readers in St. Louis County communities such as Eureka. Its listed circulation of about 10,050 for a twice-weekly paper, and the ninety-two percent market reach found for its combined print and digital products, reflect a county in which the hometown paper remained the dominant local information source well into the digital era — a position the new Hoffmann ownership, with its stated intention to keep print as part of the mix, has inherited.
Notable People
James L. Miller Sr., the immigrant reporter who bought the paper in 1937, is its defining figure; his son William L. Miller Sr., who gave the paper more than sixty-seven years, and Bill Miller Jr., publisher and general manager in the family's final years of ownership, carried it forward. Ethan Colbert has served as editor in recent years. On the ownership side, David Hoffmann — Washington native, founder of DHR Global and chairman of the Hoffmann Family of Companies — became the paper's owner in 2025, a businessman whose nationally reported campaign to invest in local newspapers began, by his own account, with a childhood photograph in the Missourian.
Recent Developments
The June 2025 sale to the Hoffmann Family of Companies is the paper's defining recent development, ending the Miller family's eighty-eight-year ownership and making the Missourian part of Hoffmann Media Group. The sale was among the most surprising Missouri newspaper transactions of the year, according to the Missouri Press Association's review of ownership changes, and it preceded Hoffmann's still larger move later in 2025 to take a controlling stake in Lee Enterprises, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — a development in which the Missourian's presses and hometown were themselves discussed as part of the region's newspaper future. Through the transition, the Missourian continues publishing from Bluff Road under the name it has carried since 1926, with roots in Franklin County stretching back to 1860.
