It operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it, and its First Amendment protection is safeguarded by the United States Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests, regularly reports.

As well as a website, Stars and Stripes publishes a global daily print edition for U.S. military service members serving overseas Monday through Friday.

After Bill Mauldin did his popular "Up Front" cartoons for the World War II Stars and Stripes, he returned home to a successful career as an editorial cartoonist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and war correspondent Ernie Pyle was regularly published in the Stars and Stripes[8][9] before he was killed by a Japanese machine-gunner on Iejima during the Battle of Okinawa.

The magazine frequently posted photographs of a young Marilyn Monroe, then known as Norma Jeane Dougherty, which later led her as being named "Miss Cheesecake 1952" by Stars and Stripes.

[13][14] Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Elaine McCusker indicated its funding would be cut and said: "We have essentially decided that, you know, kind of coming into the modern age that newspaper is probably not the best way that we communicate any longer.

[16] Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) led a bipartisan group opposed to the move, including Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a veteran, and Susan Collins (R-ME).

Stars and Stripes also serves independent military news and information to an online audience of about 2.0 million unique visitors per month, 60 to 70 percent of whom are located in the United States.

[13] A large portion of its operating costs is earned through the sale of advertising and subscriptions but it relies on government funding to back overseas reporting and distribution.

The newspaper has been published continuously in Europe since 1942 and in the Pacific since 1945. Notable former Stars and Stripes staffers include: CBS 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney and Steve Kroft; songwriter and author Shel Silverstein; comic book illustrator Tom Sutton; authors Gustav Hasford and Ralph G. Martin; painter and cartoonist Paul Fontaine; author and television news correspondent Tony Zappone; cartoonist Vernon Grant (A Monster Is Loose in Tokyo); Hollywood photographer Phil Stern; and stock market reporter and host of public television's Wall Street Week, Louis Rukeyser, and the only Black reporter in WWII, Allan Morrison.

"Joker" Davis and Private First Class "Rafterman" are a war correspondent and combat photographer, respectively, stationed in Da Nang for Stars and Stripes in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket.