In 1906, at the age of 14, he was forced by family circumstances to quit school and go to work as a printer's devil (an apprentice) for the Pawnee City Republican.

Nine months later, he and fellow Tribune employee Burris H. Stewart started their own job-printing shop,[Note 1] "with so few assets that they were forced to borrow money to buy ink".

[6] Six months later, in 1911, the two launched their own newspaper: the semi-weekly Red Willow Gazette,[Note 2] again with no assets and with heavy debts.

In 1926, the operation moved to a new building on Main Street, its facade inscribed with the paper's motto: "Service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy in this world.

"[3][4] In the 1920s, the spread of the automobile and the improvement of roads in the United States made it easier for rural residents to do their shopping in larger towns farther from their homes.

The U.S. Mail was expensive, since postage rates for newspapers had been raised drastically by the War Revenue Act of 1917; it also took several days for the papers to reach some customers.

In more developed parts of the country, publishers delivered papers by truck to local carriers in outlying towns.

The Newsboy flew a nonstop three-hour route covering 389 miles (626 km), passing over more than 40 communities in southwestern Nebraska and northwestern Kansas.

At each town, a bundle of papers was dropped from a height of 500 feet (150 m) onto a prearranged field, where it was picked up by local carriers.

Newspapers for outlying communities were transported there on commercial buses running through McCook; local carriers picked them up at their towns' bus stops.

With this machine, the paper could be produced with only two printers; this allowed it to remain in production at a time when Linotype operators were in short supply because of the war.

The high cost of operating the airplane, and the increasing availability of good roads for ground delivery, ended the venture.

Since 112 deaths and the bulk of the property damage caused by the flood had occurred in the upper Republican valley, which includes McCook, the report led to dissatisfaction among residents of the area.

Strunk and three others formed the Republican Valley Conservation Association, which lobbied aggressively for the development of a flood-control program for the entire basin; the Gazette provided office space to the organization.

One of the latter was built on Medicine Creek in Frontier County, Nebraska; the 1,850-acre (750 ha) reservoir behind it has been named Harry Strunk Lake.

[18][20] In 2009, the newspaper ended Saturday publication, moving to a schedule of five issues a week, released on Monday through Friday afternoons.