Joseph Medill Patterson created the New York Daily News in 1919 and led it within a short time to the top in daily and Sunday circulation among newspapers in the United States. With a tabloid format filled with features, pictures, and news that was highest in popular interest, the Daily News appealed to the broadest base of the population in the nation's largest city. The key to its phenomenal and unprecedented success was Patterson's ability, which some said was uncanny--even mystical--to identify with the interests of the people to whom his newspaper spoke. He knew what people wanted in their newspaper and how they wanted it to be presented to them. Patterson, said his daughter Alicia, was "born to understand why people behave as they do; why they laugh and cry and hate and love; and why they buy some newspapers but ignore others." If he was a genius...