The Kenyon Leader printed its first issue in 1885. By 1909 the county history counted two weeklies in the village, the Leader and the News, and described the Leader under its editor and publisher Andrew Finstuen, a Roscoe Township farm boy with a University of Minnesota law degree who bought the paper in 1902, sat on the village council and school board, was secretary of the Commercial Club, and later served eleven sessions in the Minnesota House (1923–1944). His paper, the historian wrote, was "bright and newsy, with able editorials, and is a welcome guest in some thousand homes in the southwest part of the county."
Today the Leader is published from 638 2nd Street by Adams Publishing Group's southernminn.com, is designated each January as the City of Kenyon's official legal newspaper, and is where every advertisement for bids, public hearing and ordinance summary must appear by law. The Kenyon Messenger, published from Dennison, is the other local paper.