20th-century Los Angeles newspaper
The Daily News (originally the Illustrated Daily News) was a newspaper published in Los Angeles from 1923 to 1954. It was founded in 1923 by Cornelius Vanderbilt IV and bought by Manchester Boddy who operated it through most of its existence.
The "Daily News" was founded in 1923 by Vanderbilt as the first of several newspapers he wanted to manage. After quickly going into receivership, it was sold to Boddy, a businessman with no newspaper experience. Boddy was able to make the newspaper succeed, and it remained profitable through the 1930s and 1940s, taking a Democratic perspective at a time when most Los Angeles newspapers supported the .
The newspaper began a steep decline in the late 1940s, continuing into the early 1950s. In 1950, Boddy ran in both the Democratic and Republican primaries for the United States Senate. He finished a distant second in each, and lost interest in the newspaper. He sold his stake in the paper in 1952 and, after changes in ownership, ceased publication in December 1954; the business was sold to the Chandler family, who merged it with their publication, the "Los Angeles Mirror", firing all "Daily News" employees without severance pay.
Founding and initial insolvency.
The "Illustrated Daily News" was founded in 1923 in Los Angeles by Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, who wished to start his own newspaper chain. The young Vanderbilt had served as a news reporter in New York for four years, but had no experience running a paper. Believing the best newspaper was a democratic one, he offered stock to those who would pay $5 for a year's subscription to his newspaper, with the right to elect two of the five directors. Repudiating the legendary adage of his great-grandfather William Henry Vanderbilt, "The public be damned," Cornelius Vanderbilt announced that the paper's philosophy would be "The public be served." Vanderbilt refused to lead the lifestyle of the idle rich—he had enlisted as a private during World WarI—and believed the West Coast, with its increasing population, would become as important to the United States as the East Coast had been. A family friend, Lord Northcliffe, founder of Britain's "Daily Mail", encouraged Vanderbilt to start a chain of serious-minded tabloids in the West, a contrast to Northcliffe's own racy newspapers. Vanderbilt loved the "swift, jazzy" tabloid format, but did not care for the sensationalism often paired with tabloid newspapers: he wanted to start one that would cost a cent and could, as he put it, "safely enter any home".
Vanderbilt ignored attempts by the newspaper moguls who dominated Los Angeles journalism, William Randolph Hearst and Harry Chandler, to discourage him. Chandler warned him not to start another paper; Hearst tried to hire him to run a tabloid he planned to start in New York City. Vanderbilt ignored them, but found that billboard companies would not give him space. Denied advertising in other newspapers, Vanderbilt attempted to gain publicity for his paper by having trucks drive through the streets bearing the paper's banner and hiring boys to chalk the paper's name on sidewalks, much to the annoyance of landowners who had to clean it up. He bought a former automobile showroom at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Los Angeles Street and furnished it with the latest printing equipment, including two presses (a third was soon added when circulation exceeded expectations). Although downtown, this was further south than the other papers. As Vanderbilt prepared for an August 1923 opening (pushed back to the following month), potential investors toured the building, attracted by high-pressure sales tactics and the promise of a free lunch.
Unusually for Los Angeles at the time, the paper's plant was a union shop, something Vanderbilt insisted on. The paper began publication on September 3, 1923, and was helped in its launch by the fact that the Great Tokyo Earthquake had just happened; it was able to provide full coverage, though using stock photographs of Japan. The initial price was one cent a copy. The tabloid format newspaper was to be devoted to the ideal of clean journalism and was prudish to an extreme: women's skirts were retouched in photos to cover the knees, while photos of wrestlers were altered so they appeared to be wearing shirts. Vanderbilt's rivals did not take well to the new competition—saboteurs planted a graphic sex story about Charlie Chaplin in the first edition, forcing Vanderbilt, at considerable expense, to stop the presses and redo Page Two before it was published. Up to a hundred "Illustrated Daily News" newsboys were treated at local hospitals each week after being assaulted. Nevertheless, in December 1923 Vanderbilt expanded to San Francisco with the "Illustrated Daily Herald" and in February 1925 to Miami—the "Illustrated Daily Tab" was intended to cash in on the Florida land boom.
The newspaper paid for its staff's transportation, something rare at the time. Reporters were expected to carry rolls of nickels, so they could board streetcars and reach their assignments; if they had sufficient money with them, a taxicab was permitted, and Vanderbilt—"Neil" to the staff—let them use his two Packards to reach stories. Too often the least experienced newsman, Vanderbilt himself, would cover major stories. According to Rob Wagner in his history of Los Angeles newspapers of the time, Vanderbilt's "news stories reeked of naiveté and his editorials were sophomoric." Vanderbilt instructed his reporters to look for human interest stories other papers might overlook; one headline read, "FOUR HUNDRED CHICKENS DISAPPEAR". Among Vanderbilt's editorial targets was the Pacific Electric Railway—the paper deemed its streetcars a danger to pedestrians and termed them "red reapers".
By 1924, the newspaper had a good circulation but was losing money because of low advertising revenues. Vanderbilt sought help from his parents, and they agreed to help if most authority went to their hand-picked manager, Harvey Johnson. His father poured over a million dollars into the newspaper in 1924–1925, but Johnson's involvement led to a rightward shift in the newspaper, which alienated many readers. In April 1926, Johnson concluded that the "Illustrated Daily News" and the two other newspapers could survive with fresh investment of $300,000, but Vanderbilt's father refused to provide any more money. A petition for receivership was filed on May 3, 1926. Of the chain's three newspapers, the "Daily News" was deemed the most salvageable—the other two closed within weeks.
Boddy takes over.
Following the filing of the petition for receivership in 1926, a consortium of the publishers of the other Los Angeles newspapers offered $150,000 for the "Illustrated Daily News", intending to shut it down. Los Angeles businessman Willis Lewis had invested heavily in the paper, and he put together a rival bid backed by the paper's outside shareholders, supporting book publishing executive Manchester Boddy to take over the paper and keep it as a going concern. The Vanderbilt family was willing to sign over a $1 million note to the Boddy consortium to keep the paper going, and the stockholders' committee raised $30,000 for a month's payroll. Boddy and Lewis both served on the Commercial Board, a group of young businessmen. The new publisher got Board members to lend him $116,000 to buy a controlling interest in the paper, but if the paper did not show a profit within six months, the lenders could repossess. Boddy, who used other people's money to purchase the newspaper, once commented, "The "Daily News" was conceived in iniquity, born in bankruptcy, reared in panic, and refinanced every six months."
The new publisher scrapped Vanderbilt's prudish policies and began a campaign against vice, spearheaded by reporter Gene Coughlin and directed against local gang boss Albert Marco. The Los Angeles police had a hands-off policy when it came to vice and organized crime. Most local reporters valued the perks given to them by the police and did nothing to push the issue. After Boddy began a crusade against crime and corruption, he weathered harassment by police and politicians, but circulation rose. In the pages of the "Daily News", Boddy fought against the "L.A. System", entrenched graft in the city's government, to the profit of many policemen, politicians, and organized crime figures, under the leadership of Charles H. Crawford. Police chief James E. Davis wanted to have Boddy prosecuted for promoting illegal gambling by publishing horse race entries and results, as betting on horse races was then illegal in California. The district attorney's office chose to take no action, and Boddy later successfully advocated for a repeal of the ban, leading to the establishments of California tracks such as Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. Boddy also streamlined operations and stabilized the paper's management.
Boddy, each day, wrote a front-page editorial espousing his views. His newspaper gave its reader a steady diet of coverage of celebrities, sports, and gossip, with illustrations of pro wrestlers and women in bathing suits. Boddy mocked Hearst and Chandler in his pages, and often embarrassed the powerful, once displaying a photograph of a city official picking his nose. By 1929, the "Daily News" was showing a profit, and three years later, amid the Depression, began publishing a broadsheet edition, raising its price from two to three cents. Boddy said that with a circulation of 150,000, the paper was profitable even without advertising. By 1932, Boddy had dropped the word "Illustrated" from the name of the paper.
Prewar years.
During the first six years of Boddy's ownership, the "Daily News" maintained a conservative editorial policy. He was a personal supporter of President Herbert Hoover's bid for reelection in 1932. Los Angeles newspaper owners met and decided that, as all newspaper owners were supporting Hoover, one paper had to support the Democratic candidate, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, and Boddy and the "Daily News" volunteered for the job. The day after the presidential election, which saw Roosevelt elected in a landslide, Boddy turned to his city editor and said of the voters: "They have made a terrible mistake. I helped them do it. But damn it, I had to make a living."
After Roosevelt's election, the nation waited with anticipation for the specifics of the "New Deal" plan on which he had campaigned. Boddy had no more information than anyone else, but had been impressed by a program called "technocracy", which proposed replacing politicians with scientists and engineers possessing the technical expertise to coordinate the economy, a scheme Roosevelt did not advocate. On November 30, 1932, the "Daily News" printed a huge headline "New Deal Details Bared". The article contained no inside information, and actually did not even mention Roosevelt, but instead outlined technocracy. He continued to discuss technocracy for weeks, as the people of Los Angeles, desperate for plausible information from any source, bought copies of the "Daily News", even invading the paper's loading dock to get them as quickly as possible. Even after Roosevelt took office, the "Daily News" trumpeted proposals to give money to the nation's citizens, such as Francis Townsend's plan that the federal government give $200 a month to every citizen over age 60. The "Daily News" also gave space to the "Ham 'n' Eggs" plan whereby the elderly would get checks for $30 every Thursday. Boddy hit the lecture circuit to advocate social credit, another plan for the government to return taxes to the citizenry.
When the New Deal finally was brought forth, Boddy became an avid supporter of it, and so did his newspaper, making it the only Democratic daily in Los Angeles. In 1934, writer Upton Sinclair ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, advocating the End Poverty in California (EPIC) program. When Sinclair scored a surprise upset victory in the Democratic primary against George Creel, most newspapers closed ranks against him and supported the Republican candidate, Frank Merriam. The "Daily News", on the other hand, opened its front page to Sinclair's program and called him "a great man". Though the "Daily News" eventually endorsed Merriam, who was elected, its objection was not that the program was too radical, but that it was not consistent with the New Deal. This did not stop Sinclair from being embittered at what he saw as a betrayal by the "Daily News", accusing Boddy of "leading liberal movements up blind alleys and bludgeoning them".
Boddy acquired the "Los Angeles Record" in 1935, changing its name to the "Evening News". The two papers were subsequently merged under the "Daily News" name. Boddy's columns were so popular he secured a radio show on KFWB