Over the past 150 years there have been a number of newspapers in Waukon. The first newspaper in town was the Waukon Journal, started in 1857. The newspaper was not much more than several sheets of paper with printed news columns, as was the case with many of the frontier papers of the day. It was "free-soil" in political affiliation, meaning that the newspaper did not favor one political party over another. Today, political affiliation of a newspaper means very little to nearly all but the most prominent newspapers in the country.