The editorial department of The Maneater remains independent from any student governments and organizations, as well as the Missouri School of Journalism and university itself.

The Maneater was founded in 1955 by Joel Gold, then a sociology student, as editor-in-chief and Jim Willard as business manager.

Gold renamed it The Maneater to reflect a more aggressive news angle and transitioned the paper into an independent watchdog of the university.

A growing desire for digital content led the paper to scale back to a weekly publishing schedule beginning in August 2013.

Given the task of refurbishing the paper, Gold likened The Maneater's new editorial policy to an aggressive news source, with the goal of turning out stories that students would want to read.

In 1969, School of Journalism printers decided they couldn't typeset a caption describing the vulgarities of a cartoon printed and distributed by a student, later expelled from the university, on campus.

Facing harsh competition from an upstart rival paper called the Campus Courier, which distributed its issues at no cost to readers, The Maneater was forced to make itself free as well in order to compete, and although the Courier lasted only a year, the loss of 10 cents an issue and more competition for advertising put The Maneater into substantial debt that lasted until the middle of the decade.

Semester special editions have included coverage of Columbia's Treeline Music Festival (formerly known as Roots N Blues N BBQ) and the True/False Film Fest.

Prior to fall 2013, MOVE had been published as an insert within The Maneater, under its own style and design guidelines, with the eventual hope that it could develop into its own distinct publication.

However, under the 2013-14 editorial board, MOVE replaced the Arts and Entertainment section of the newspaper and was integrated more uniformly with the rest of The Maneater.