Originating in the early 1870s, shortly after the city's founding, it is owned by The McClatchy Company and is the largest newspaper in Wichita and the surrounding area.

[4][5] On April 12, 1872, The Wichita Eagle was founded and edited by Marshall M. Murdock,[6][7] and it became a daily paper in May 1884.

[8] In October 1872, The Wichita Daily Beacon was founded by Fred A. Sowers and David Millison.

[9][10] In 1926, the Levand brothers, Max, Leonard, John and Louis purchased the Wichita Beacon from Senator Henry Allen.

[13][14] In January 2017, the paper announced it had signed a deal for office space in the Old Town area of downtown Wichita.

It plans to move newsroom and advertising employees to 330 North Mead (from 825 East Douglas) in the spring of 2017.

Effective October 23, 2023, the paper's daily print edition will be delivered via the U.S. Mail instead of delivery by a local carrier.

[16] The paper built its national reputation largely under the editorship of W. Davis "Buzz" Merritt Jr., one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of civic journalism (also known as public journalism) which believes that journalists and their audiences are not merely spectators in political and social processes, and that journalists should not simply report dry facts as a pretense that their reporting represents unadulterated neutrality, which is impossible.