#the easier solution for the daily star-daily planet variance

[cantsayidont]

January 1985. On Earth-2, Clark Kent became a newspaper editor in the early 1950s, and soon picked up the "Don't call me 'chief'!" thing.

It's a good bit, although it's muddied by some arbitrary continuity choices: On Earth-2, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy spent their entire careers at the Daily Star, the paper from the earliest Superman comics stories, not at the Daily Planet. As revealed in the "Mr. and Mrs. Superman" story in THE SUPERMAN FAMILY #197, Perry White was a reporter for the Star, but he was never their editor (although he and Clark competed for the job when editor George Taylor announced his retirement), so the "Yes, chief?"/"Don't call me 'chief'!" gag is referencing something that never happened on Earth-2. This also means that while Earth-2 was supposed to be the home of the Golden Age Superman, a lot of Golden Age Superman stories couldn't have happened on Earth-2 unless you mentally substitute the Daily Star for the Daily Planet and George Taylor for Perry White.