The Illustrated Daily News was founded in 1923 in Los Angeles by Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, who wished to start his own newspaper chain.

[5] Vanderbilt ignored attempts by the newspaper moguls who dominated Los Angeles journalism, William Randolph Hearst and Harry Chandler, to discourage him.

[4] 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).

[7] 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.

[3] The paper began publication on September 3, 1923,[8] 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.

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.

[5] Among Vanderbilt's editorial targets was the Pacific Electric Railway—the paper deemed its streetcars a danger to pedestrians and termed them "red reapers".

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.

[16] 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.

[19] Boddy, who used other people's money to purchase the newspaper,[20] once commented, "The Daily News was conceived in iniquity, born in bankruptcy, reared in panic, and refinanced every six months.

"[21][a] 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.

[25] 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.

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.

[11] 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.

[11] By 1929, the Daily News was showing a profit,[16] and three years later, amid the Depression, began publishing a broadsheet edition, raising its price from two to three cents.

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.

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.

[30] 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.

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".

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".

[40] 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.

[39] 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.

[41] 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".

[45] In May 1953, the Daily News dropped the Sunday edition, changed from being an afternoon paper to morning, and cut its price from ten cents to seven.

[46] McKinnon related that he had been approached by labor leaders who wanted to keep the Daily News in business, but after the paper was purchased, much of their support failed to materialize.

Being constantly in the throes of political debate among the various wings of the Democratic Party, the News nevertheless had many thousands of loyal supporters who felt the need of an opposition newspaper in Los Angeles.