C. Wesley Roberts (or Wes Roberts) was born in Oskaloosa, Kansas, where he died, the son of Daisy Marian (née Needham) and Francis Henry "Frank" Roberts.[1] The Roberts family published the smalltown weekly Oskaloosa Independent for more than a century. Davis Publications currently owns The Oskaloosa Independent.[2]
Alvin Scott McCoy of The Kansas City Star won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for local reporting for a series of articles that drove Roberts to resign his RNC chairmanship.[3] Roberts was accused of collecting a $10,000 commission on the sale of a hospital to the State of Kansas which the state already owned.[4]