In part to aid in his political ambitions, Hearst opened newspapers in other cities, among them Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. In 1915, he founded International Film Service, an animation studio designed to exploit the popularity of the comic strips he controlled. The creation of his Chicago paper was requested by the Democratic National Committee. Hearst used this as an excuse for his mother Phoebe Hearst to transfer him the necessary start-up funds. By the mid-1920s he had a nationwide string of 28 newspapers, among them the "Los Angeles Examiner", the "Boston American", the "Atlanta Georgian", the "Chicago Examiner", the "Detroit Times", the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer", the "Washington Times", the "Washington Herald", and his flagship, the "San Francisco Examiner".