Who's This? The paper of record.
The facts: Metropolis being partly based on Toronto, it originally had a Daily Star, but by Action Comics #23 (1940), it had been changed to the Daily Planet, a more original name that spoke to science-fiction origins of the Man of Steel. It also sounds inspired by another Toronto paper, the Globe & Mail. The change was apparently made for the Superman comics strip, avoiding the names of real newspapers that might be rivals to those who published it. Though Clark Kent and Lois Lane were their from the beginning, and a kid who would morph into Jimmy Olsen first appeared in Action Comics #6, Perry White was not editor-in-chief until Superman #7, not long after the name was changed, though his true first appearance is on the Superman Adventures radio show earlier in 1940. The Bronze Age had its staffers, most prominently Steve Lombard who premiered in 1973, but several of the more memorable ones are post-Crisis creations, like Cat Grant and Ron Troupe. As the newspaper business had its ups and downs, the paper was sometimes downplayed (when Clark became a television news anchor in the 70s or the more web/multi-media-driven stuff we've had in more recent years), but it's still going strong. The Saturnine globe is an iconic part of Metropolis' skyline.
How you could have heard of it: If you know Superman, you know the Daily Planet.
Example story: World of Metropolis #1 (August 1988) "A Reporter's Story" by John Byrne, Win Mortimer, Frank McLaughlin and Dick Giordano
For a journalism story, I decided to go with Perry White. Unlike Lois and Jimmy, he doesn't get an entry in this volume of Who's Who, so it's our chance to discuss the [don't call him] Chief (though sadly, the post-Crisis time frame means no chance of magic cigars - those who know, know). Having a newspaper as a core part of your hero's story creates lots of opportunities, not just for Superman to get clued into various "missions" of interest, but just visually. You can conceivably do actual newspaper pages (DC's monthly text page for years was called The Daily Planet and they've even published mock promotional copies such as for Invasion!), or how about this fun transition from action to print?
Of course, the DANGER of using any workplace as a key component of your stories is that it shows when you don't know how the business works (or knowingly use short cuts that undermine its believability). Case in point: Perry finding out about a news item... FROM READING THE DAILY PLANET!
Even if this is a mock-up pending approval before going to the printer's, it makes it seem like Perry doesn't know what his reporters are working on. But let's get out of the frame tale... Perry flashes back to younger days when he and Lex Luthor were friends. Perry has just gotten off a plane after 18 months in the jungle (Vietnam, presumably), and it seems Lex has him under surveillance already. Perry's future wife Alice wasn't there to meet him because she's at Luthor's place... and has been since the night before. Uh-oh. But you know, Perry's been gone a year and a half and despite the fact that SURELY he filed articles, Alice never knew if he was alive or dead. Also: I'm not sure Alice is his #1 girl:
Perry waxes nostalgic about this time in his life when he waxed nostalgic about being a copy boy at the Planet when he was ten. Quite the Russian doll. Also note his short commute, when he's not reporting abroad. His eventual reunion with Alice is sweet, but she has to drop a bomb on him. Just not the bomb you think:
So they head right over, Alice accompanying, awkwardness be damned, and find Luthor on his rooftop pool with lots of bikini babes. Luthor currently owns the Planet, but thinks print is dead (he was always a futurist) and aims to close it. He wants Perry to run the news desk at the new WLEX, but Perry hates television. And if that's how it's gonna be, Lex makes sur to hurt him by revealing the affair.
Back at the Planet, little Lois Lane is with her elementary class taking a tour of the offices and getting a history lesson.
Some notes: 1) I love how that guy is so used to doing the tour that he runs through the history at a breakneck pace, like "get these kids outta here already". 2) Wow. They really laid it on thick with the Planet's importance in American media. George Washington wrote its first editorial?! 4) George Tailor, the editor of the Daily Star is Superman's first stories is canonically Perry's predecessor (he also worked for him in Bronze Age continuity). And 3) Lois is a precocious little thing, isn't she? I bet she has posters of Woodward, Bernstein and White in her bedroom. Perry proceeds to curse up a storm before noticing there are little kids in the room, before getting to a phone and calling every favor he can to save the Planet. He finds backers, but he needs a big gun to buy it out from under Lex, and at the end of his rope, he calls a disreputable billionaire he knows in Asia. Asian interests were, indeed, buying up media in North America in this era (a lot of Canada's cable channels are owned by the Shaw Brothers of kung fu cinema fame, for example), so that tracks. Mr. Ling has one condition - Perry needs to step up and take the editor-in-chief's desk. And so...
Lex may or may not realize the Planet is now going to be a thorn in his side, but why is he laughing? Did he make a mint selling it? Probably, but it's more to do with the next page's revelation that Alice is pregnant. Perry's super happy about it, but her expression tells us it's probably Lex's baby (and it will be).
More corporate maneuvering than journalism in this one, but when you do workplace drama, it's bound to happen. Hm, should I have gone with issue 2 and Lois Lane chasing down her first story as a teen? Maybe, but my hands are stained with newsprint and I need to file this now.
Who's Next? A shadowy alliance.
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