A few weeks or months after I became publisher, my mother told me, I used to tell your father that I thought you were ready, but he wouldnt listen to me,. he said. Ever concerned with the papers image and visibility nationally, he teamed with Philip Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post, to create the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service to distribute the papers stories to client papers. Some at the Los Angeles Times felt that Chandlers sharp public criticism of management and the widespread attention it received played a role in several subsequent management decisions. [1], In 1990, Chandler was trampled by a musk ox in the Northwest Territories of Canada. He set his sights on a goal making The Times one of the two or three great American papers and he pulled it off.. "No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did," journalist David Halberstam wrote in his history of the company. He worked out daily, lifting weights in a gym he had built at The Times and improvising when he was traveling. His mother rushed him to a second hospital, where a doctor she knew revived him with an adrenaline shot to the heart. Although Chandler worried that the papers standing among opinion-makers would decline and that the new management was no longer committed to making The Times the best newspaper in the country, he said others in the Chandler family didnt share his concerns or his priorities. Both Thomas and Johnson said he hated being chairman. [1], In 1998, at age 71, Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a Ferrari automobile on the road in Oxnard. The paper's Sunday magazine on October 10, 1999, was a special issue dedicated to the new Staples Center sports arena in downtown L.A., home to the Lakers, Clippers and Kings. [1], Chandler made improvement of the paper's quality a top priority, succeeding in raising the product's reputation, as well as its profit margins. Like many women of her generation, Marilyn Chandler had long put her own career interests on hold to raise their children. [1] And in January 1964, they hired a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist away from the Denver Post. Despite that, Chandler did not envision journalism as a career during his youth; instead, he often said he would like to become a doctor. [4], He was not involved in negotiations by other members of the Chandler family to sell The Times to Tribune Company, a clear sign of how his influence had eroded. Chandler would assume the newly created position of editor in chief of Times Mirror and, on Jan. 1, 1981, he would succeed Murphy as chairman. It is Marilyn Brant. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Otis Chandler. Doctors estimated that his dislocated right arm would never fully heal, but, citing a disciplined training regimen, Chandler claimed to regain virtually all use. His efforts led him directly into confrontation with a powerful force for the status quo: his own family. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Although all three of his sons worked at the paper for varying periods, none ascended into the top executive ranks. During Chandlers first year as publisher, the paper ran one of the most important series in its history, stories that helped define the new Los Angeles Times. Married Harry Chandler . When I came, recalled Day, the former editorial page editor, I thought [Otis] was going to build a progressive newspaper dynasty like the Washington Post or the New York Times. Chandler was elated; many who knew him well and saw him after that race said they had rarely seen him happier. Typically, Chandler would offer gentle advice, Carroll said, but never try to dictate what the new management should do with the paper. Chandler re-entered the public eye in 1999 when he publicly criticized the LA Times for creating a special issue of its Sunday magazine dedicated to the new Staples Center in downtown LA when the paper shared a financial interest in the property. I liked to make it on my own in whatever I accomplished, he told an interviewer. Born in Los Angeles on Nov. 23, 1927, Chandler was the only son of Norman Chandler and Dorothy Buffum Chandler. When doctors said Otis was dead, Mrs. Chandler wailed, My son is not dead! She picked him up and raced to another hospital, screaming all the way there, Otis is alive, Otis is alive!. The 1962 gubernatorial campaign was another. Not only did it not, as a rule, endorse Democrats for elective office; it didnt cover their campaigns. [2] In 1945, her husband became publisher of the Times, a position he held until he was succeeded by their son, Otis, in 1960. Otis and Williams perhaps the ablest newspaper editor of his generation, in Halberstams words became a formidable team. He wrote offbeat feature stories, such as one about the people who feed sharks at the aquarium. Staffing in Washington and Sacramento was expanded. For all his seeming calm and control throughout his life, he had suffered from sporadic bouts of insomnia and intestinal pain diagnosed as a spastic colon ever since he became publisher. He had purchased his first a 1931 Duesenberg in 1968 for $35,000, and he built a world-class collection of Porsches, Ferraris, Duesenbergs, Cadillacs, Packards and other classics before selling all of them to meet the financial terms of his divorce settlement. At the same time, it doubled its circulation to more than 1 million daily and for many years during and after his tenure published more news and more advertising than any other newspaper in the United States. Such special issues were financial windfalls for the Times, generating a record $2 million in ad revenue. [1] Later, Chandler said his motivation to invest in The Times' quality could be attributed, at least in part, to his desire to combat the East Coast opinion that, "The Times was regarded as a bad newspaper from a hick town". As it turned out, however, several members of the Chandler family had begun to share Otis disenchantment with Willes, especially the companys lack of diversification, interest in new media and long-term strategic plan, as Chandlers sister, Camilla Chandler Frost, put it the morning the sale to Tribune was announced. Under Chandlers direction, The Times scrambled to hire the best of the reporters and editors from the two defunct papers and to get rid of its own deadwood. When stories in local alternative weeklies, followed by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, disclosed details of the deal, the newsroom erupted in protest, circulating petitions and demanding an apology from Downing, the publisher, who had signed the original founding partner agreement. But even though the paper and the company has been sold, it feels to me like Im home again.. [1], A sprained wrist kept him from competing as a shot putter for the United States in the 1952 Summer Olympics. The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped all charges against Chandler in 1975, but the case cost him more than $1 million in legal fees, and it had a devastating emotional effect on him. Most of his early jobs in the training program were just that jobs, a grinding routine, he later said and because his father wanted him to have as many Times experiences (and meet as many Times employees) as possible, his schedule was constantly changing. When Burke asked Chandler if hed like to invest in his company and introduce Burke to other potential investors among the publishers wealthy friends Chandler was happy to comply. He was bold in making changes and investments in the paper that transformed The Times into a world-class news organization., Otis was a giant in every way, said Donald Graham, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the Washington Post Co. The paper you are reading is his monument. And he took special pleasure in telling friends and colleagues about the telephone call he received from John Madigan, then-chairman and chief executive of Tribune, at 7 a.m. the day the takeover was announced. Chandlers wife, Bettina, was with him. Watkins Glen was to be one of the most enjoyable experiences of Chandlers life. Although Chandler had been opposed to Sen. Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, he had deferred to his father and reluctantly agreed to run an editorial before the Republican convention pledging The Times traditional support to whomever the party chose as its nominee and that turned out to be Goldwater. Hes restless. The negotiations were so secret that Willes said he didnt know about them until less than two weeks before the deal was done, and Chandler said he didnt learn of them until he began hearing rumors two days before the agreement was made. As a Times columnist, he would become one of the most celebrated sportswriters ever. Like his father, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Sigma Rho chapter). This was a flagrant violation of the independence of the editorial department, and it placed the credibility of the paper in jeopardy. Their son Harry concurred, although he also agreed with his mother that most of the familys leisure activities revolved around what Dad wanted to do camping, water skiing, cliff-jumping, surfing. Id work the graveyard shift for a week, then spend a week on days, then a week on the swing shift, then back to the graveyard shift, he recalled. They wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. But he persisted and in 1978 at age 50, after years of what he called Walter Mitty fantasies about becoming a race car driver finally got a chance to race professionally. He moved gradually at first, then much more quickly, especially after hiring Day, who joined the paper as chief editorial writer in 1969 and later became editor of the editorial pages. The New York Times even published an editorial under the headline The Truth According to Otis Chandler.. He had family money, but he had looked on GeoTek as another chance to prove he could succeed on his own, and he wound up embarrassed and forced by the exposure to return his stock and finders fees. The Mirror was losing $30,000 a week, and Otis sent his father a confidential memo urging that a strong business manager be hired. Chandler said the move would help allay the concerns of readers who, mindful of the papers partisan history, find it hard to believe that this newspapers editorial page endorsements really dont affect the news columns.. He handed control of the paper to people outside the family in the mid-1980s and threw himself into other interests such as the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife in Oxnard, California, which he founded in 1987 (It was regularly open to the public, primarily as a fundraiser for charities, including the Oxnard Police Activities League). By his strength and by his judgment of good journalists, he was of unique importance in the history of the Los Angeles Times.. In 1977, Chandler brought Tom Johnson, publisher of the Dallas Times-Herald and a former aide to President Johnson (no relation), to Los Angeles as president of The Times and heir apparent for publisher. After the series was published, Otis asked for an editorial criticizing the Birchers. Two years later, he was considered a cinch to be one of three shotputters on the U.S. team for the Olympic Games in Helsinki, but he sprained his wrist before the tryouts and had to pull out the biggest disappointment of my life, he recalled almost 50 years later. 1. This coincided with the shift of the paper's editorial stance from overtly conservative to independent. At the age of 8, Chandler was thrown to the ground during a horseback riding lesson. But the newsroom was riddled with hacks, and Norman Chandler was unwilling to make sweeping personnel changes or to approve the expenditures necessary to effect significant improvement. The only other possible publisher in the family, however, was Normans younger brother Philip, then general manager of The Times and a member of the Times Mirror board. Theyll have to carry me out of here feet first, he said. But he said he wished people realized that if hed been left totally on his own, he might have done something different, so why did they question it when he finally decided he would do something different., Although Chandler often likened himself to the eagle that serves as the symbol of The Times I like to soar, to get above the minutiae and the crowds he insisted that as long as he was publisher, I was living the life I wanted to live. Chandler acknowledged that it was a difficult time for newspapers, but he disagreed vigorously with Willes approach. Well before Chandler was named publisher, a poll of Washington correspondents conducted by writer Leo Rosten named The Times one of the three least fair and reliable newspapers in the country. For a time, when he was young, Chandler rode a bicycle several miles to and from the Polytechnic School in Pasadena. Chandler continued to meet regularly with Puerner and John Carroll, who became editor of The Times shortly after the Tribune purchased the paper and remained in that position until last summer. Chandler liked the shotput and weightlifting, he once said, because they were individual sports, and he could be judged on his own merits. 'It was three outside members of the [Times Mirror] board who persuaded him to do it [1], In 1966 Chandler received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. Although The Times had, on rare occasion, endorsed conservative Democrats for state legislative and U.S. House seats, the backing of a Democrat for such a high office was a momentous decision, Chandler said in a 2005 interview. Chandler started prep school at Cate, in Carpinteria, but his parents thought hed find a greater challenge and broader perspective back East, so after a year they transferred him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. As recently as September, Chandler appeared fit, aside from a knee injury, and was lucid enough to sit for an interview and give a visitor a guided tour of his classic car and motorcycle museum in Oxnard. The most traumatic experience of Chandlers childhood one that assumed mythic proportions as he grew toward adulthood came when he was 8. In October 1957, continuing his climb into the executive ranks, Chandler was named special assistant to his father. He was also so disenchanted with the management of Times Mirror by then that, to the dismay of many, he not only didnt fight or even criticize the sale but instead embraced it as a very positive move a perfect fit a win-win situation.. Murray had helped create Sports Illustrated and was one of its stars. With Otis gone, the heat shield was gone, Johnson said. At the time he enrolled at Phillips, Chandler weighed 155 pounds. Updated: October 7, 2011 . During his tenure it would expand to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. But he also had a princes sense of entitlement, a sense that perhaps I dont have to do this every damn day, he added. And it became clear over the years that he did not have any such intention. There Chandler spent much of his time alone, later in life unable to name a single childhood friend. Respect and credibility for a newspaper is irreplaceable.. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. When the Hearsts and Chandlers agreed to fold the two papers, The Times acquired a monopoly in the increasingly lucrative morning market, while Hearsts Los Angeles Herald-Express (renamed the Herald Examiner) was left with a monopoly in the increasingly problematic afternoon market. . Critics also thought his position at the top of the citys power structure prevented The Times from aggressively investigating that establishment. It was a watershed experience, he said. Its true that in 1958 Norman Chandler had promoted Williams, a 27-year Times veteran, to the top editors job and had given him instructions to initiate a more aggressive and evenhanded approach to the news. Going with newspapers only is a flawed strategy, a dangerous philosophy that puts The Times at risk. Chandler was raised to share his family's distaste for labor unions, a tradition that favored the family's financial interests. [2] At Stanford he was a successful shot putter. As much as Chandler remained interested in The Times, he immensely enjoyed his retirement years. I like living on the edge, he said in a 1999 interview, five months after his 71st birthday and two weeks after he suffered minor head injuries when he spun out in one of his Ferraris near the vintage-car and wildlife museum he owned in Oxnard. Within a few years, The Times had a 2-1 lead over the Herald Examiner in advertising revenue, which provides about 80% of the income for most newspapers. Who can help student-athletes cash in? More than most high-level executives, Chandler also seemed willing to interrupt the workday occasionally when pleasure beckoned. The GeoTek debacle helped greatly exacerbate the colon problem. About the same time, McKinsey & Co., a management consulting firm, was conducting another of its periodic studies for The Times, and it too recommended dividing the responsibilities of publisher and chairman. How could I have been so stupid? But he also worried about his legacy, and he increasingly spoke critically, if only in private at first, about his unhappiness with the direction of Times Mirror and the paper under Mark Willes, a former executive at General Mills who had been hired to succeed Erburu as chairman and chief executive in 1995 and also assumed the title of Times publisher when Richard T. Schlosberg III retired unexpectedly in 1997. When he went home after his time in the Air Force, though, he didnt envision journalism as his lifes work. 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