page_title: Illustrated Daily News
section_title: Decline and fall
hierarchical_section_title: Illustrated Daily News / Decline and fall
caption_attribution_description: English: Campaign flyer for Manchester Boddy for Senate campaign.
context_page_description: The Daily News was a newspaper published in Los Angeles from 1923 to 1954. It was operated through most of its existence by Manchester Boddy.
  The Daily News was founded in 1923 by the young Cornelius Vanderbilt IV 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 Republican Party.
  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.
context_section_description: Boddy had predicted World War II several years in advance. When war came, his desire to be a crusading journalist diminished, and he devoted more time to the camellias on his estate, Descanso. Like most newspapers, the Daily News prospered during the war. Pioneering photojournalist Helen Brush Jenkins got her start replacing her husband at the Daily News when he went to war. She did so well there was no vacancy for him when he returned, and she kept her job there for 12 years, in 1951 capturing the light of a nuclear test in Nevada from the roof of the Daily News building, a picture dubbed, "Atomic Dawn". While there were woman journalists at other Los Angeles dailies during the war, they followed a path already broken by women at the Daily News, which also employed minorities such as Latino night editor Sparky Saldana and his brother, sportswriter Lupe Saldana.
  Until the war, the Daily News had been published on peach-colored paper; when it changed back from white afterwards, the paper held a parade through downtown entitled "The Peach is Back!" and tossed peaches to onlookers. Daily News readership peaked in 1947, when an average 300,000 copies per day were sold. In both absolute and relative terms, though, it was falling further and further behind the other Los Angeles dailies, such as the Times and Los Angeles Examiner. In addition, Boddy, who was now past sixty, was losing interest in managing the paper. Fierce competition from the new Chandler family tabloid, the Los Angeles Mirror, also hurt circulation and profits. Nevertheless, Boddy advanced money to keep the paper in business, lending nearly $2 million to fund its operations between 1948 and 1952, funds for which he did not seek repayment in the paper's subsequent bankruptcy. The Daily News was the only Democratic newspaper in Los Angeles in the postwar years, featuring columns by Eleanor Roosevelt and Drew Pearson, with cartoons by Herb Block.
  In 1950, feeling he was repeating himself in print, Boddy sought another way to involve himself in public affairs by running for the Democratic nomination for United States Senate. Boddy was tapped to enter the race when incumbent Sheridan Downey dropped out during the primary. Democratic establishment figures distrusted the remaining major Democratic candidate, liberal Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, and feared that a Douglas victory would hand the election to the likely Republican candidate, Congressman Richard M. Nixon. Daily News staffers believed Boddy was abandoning his journalistic integrity in running. Boddy ran in both major party primaries, a practice known as "cross filing", but his campaign was ineffective, and he finished a distant second in each primary. During the campaign, he mocked Douglas's liberal views by dubbing her "the pink lady" in the Daily News, a nickname reused by the Nixon campaign in the general election. Just before the primary, when Nixon (who along with Douglas had also cross-filed) sent out election materials that did not mention he was a Republican, an ad appeared in the Daily News from the hitherto-unknown "Veterans Democratic Committee". The advertisement accused Nixon of masquerading as a Democrat, and dubbed him "Tricky Dick"—the first appearance of that Nixon moniker. Nixon went on to win the general election over Douglas in a landslide.
  After the primary defeat, Boddy went into semi-retirement, and profits from sales of the Daily News began to decrease. In early 1951, he made his assistant, Robert Smith, editor of the paper, and in mid-1952, sold out to a consortium led by Smith. In August 1952, Boddy announced his retirement as publisher in Smith's favor. Smith instituted changes, substituting a Sunday News for the money-losing Saturday edition. He called in William Townes as editor, who was well known for restoring ailing newspapers, but Smith fired Townes after twelve weeks on the job. Smith attempted to sell the paper, and reached an agreement with a small-time Oregon newspaper owner, Sheldon F. Sackett. After signing, Smith backed out of the deal. By the time Smith fin
caption: A flyer for Boddy's election campaign, which described him as "the Democrat everybody wants for U.S. senator"
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.6.6", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:06 22:33:06", "Image ExifOffset": "208", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Shutter Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:09:06 13:09:55", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:09:06 13:09:55", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "37/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "6149/1087", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "02", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "02", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1583", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1781", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "233549/48", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "287726/59", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}