Most historians credit Otis mother Buff to her friends and family with persuading her husband to make their son his successor. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Chandler said there was no simple answer: The region was changing, the demographic was changing, the type of paper was changing, he said. Three top editors asked Boyarsky not to read the statement aloud, fearing that it would further provoke an already enraged staff. A year later, he moved again. It was at Watkins Glen that Chandler got to know Bettina Whitaker, who was an executive at Shakeys International, a sponsor of his Watkins Glen car. 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. This was the only big investment I ever made, and I didnt do any investigation of it beforehand. Alberta Chandler, the wife of Chandlers uncle (and rival) Philip, was a prominent member of the Birch Society, and she and Philip had played host to Birch Society President Robert Welch. The two had hunted together, and Burke was the godfather of Chandlers eldest daughter, Cathleen. 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. He foresaw the sprawling megalopolis that Los Angeles and its neighboring counties would become, and he wanted The Times to be the dominant paper from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.. His mother rushed him to a second hospital, where a doctor she knew revived him with an adrenaline shot to the heart. Chandler was raised to share his family's distaste for labor unions, a tradition that favored the family's financial interests. "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. Going with newspapers only is a flawed strategy, a dangerous philosophy that puts The Times at risk. He collected vintage cars and drove most of them to work at one time or another, alternating Porsches and Rolls-Royces with motorcycles, pickups and other vehicles in his growing inventory. 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. Otis Chandler, whose vision and determination as publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980 catapulted the paper from mediocrity into the front ranks of American journalism, died today of a degenerative illness called Lewy body disease. Sure enough, both Thomas and Johnson said that after Chandler left, they were pressured by the sixth floor, where Times Mirror corporate offices were, to fire Day, whom Erburu and many in the family and on the board regarded as too liberal. Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. Otis shoveled fertilizer for the family fruit trees at an early age and was kept on such a modest allowance that even when he went to college, he later recalled, the most lavish transportation I could afford was half-interest in a secondhand motorcycle.. As much as any other change at the paper, the arrival of Paul Conrad brilliant, sharp-penned and liberal served notice that an entirely new breed of Chandler was in charge. Although Chandler had previously been insistent that his criticisms of the business strategies pursued by Times management remain private, this undermining of the papers editorial integrity stirred him to action. 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. [1], His son, Mike Chandler, was a race-car driver in the CART Championship Car series. No one could say that the team carried me or that the coach put me in because my name was Chandler.. When he arrived at his parents' home with his wife and first child, his father presented him with credentials for a seven-year executive training program at The Times. From the start, he wrote periodic first-person columns, prominently displayed in the front section of the paper, musing about the life of an athlete or the quirks of an outboard motor. And that apparently gave Mrs. Chandler the opening she needed. They wanted to impeach Earl Warren, chief justice of the United States. And it became clear over the years that he did not have any such intention. Chandler said he wanted to hunt only the rarest and the biggest and the best, and he killed more than 100 such animals 10-foot brown bears and polar bears, lions and musk ox, wild antelope and mountain sheep many of which he had mounted on the walls of a trophy room in the home he shared with his first wife in San Marino. Within four years, Time magazine and others were routinely mentioning The Times as one of the three or four best newspapers in the country. He was featured on the cover of sporting magazines like Road & Track, Strength and Health, and Safari Club. Many Chandler associates said his marriages breakup and the end of his publishership were inextricably intertwined. His father made sure that Chandler experienced work in all sections of the organization, assigning him to jobs in the industrial production of the paper, business management, clerical administration, and the news-gathering operation.[1]. 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!. He also showed his father skills that went beyond the reportorial. Because much of his Times Mirror stock was tied up in trust funds, a lot of his money came from buying and selling cars. By the time he enrolled at Stanford University in 1946, he weighed about 200 pounds. By all accounts, the family enjoyed their outdoor experiences together, for Chandler focused on his children as intensely as he did on everything else that mattered in his life. Unbeknown to the reporters and editors who worked on that project and to the entire editorial staff of The Times the paper had agreed to share the profits from the issue with Staples Center as part of a complicated arrangement by which The Times became a founding partner of the arena. As a child, each year his parents held a memorial for the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing, linked to political agitators, that killed 20 Times workers. The two married in 1922, and had two children, Camilla and Otis, both born in 1927. Chandler attributed his pursuit of solo athletics like shotputting and weightlifting to the same sources, saying, "No one could say that the team carried me or that the coach put me in because my name was Chandler". A go-anywhere, ride-any-wave surfer for more than 60 years, Chandler also hunted big game on safaris, raced high-speed cars and motorcycles on official tracks and urban freeways and was always looking for new challenges, preferably those with some measure of risk. Sure, like any business executive, there were times when I would like to have been away from it all, free of responsibilities. You cannot overstate the importance of Otis Chandlers impact on the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper industry and all of Southern California, said current Times Publisher Jeff Johnson (no relation to Tom Johnson). After leaving the Air Force in 1953, he had little direction for his career. Although all three of his sons worked at the paper for varying periods, none ascended into the top executive ranks. Those included an increase in the amount of news the paper printed, the adoption of a new statement of principles and ethical guidelines, and the publication of an investigation into how and why the Staples deal had occurred. 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. Chandler later praised his editor for frequently reminding a young publisher that you cant change a whole paper overnight.. In October 1957, continuing his climb into the executive ranks, Chandler was named special assistant to his father. Periodically, Chandler rented the now-defunct Riverside Raceway for a day so he, Thomas and their friends could race their cars. But he was hardly unaware of his familys powerful position. 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 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.. The Chandlers had no rival as the most powerful family in Southern California. Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, "Publisher Who Couldn't Get Enough Competition", "Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication", "Otis Chandler, 78; transformed L.A. Times into a leading paper", "Otis Chandler, Publisher Who Transformed Los Angeles Times, Dies at 78", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Otis_Chandler&oldid=1112344101, Stanford Cardinal men's track and field athletes, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Pages using infobox person with multiple parents, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 25 September 2022, at 21:57. LA Times After dropping out of Stanford, Chandler started working at the newspaper as a secretary to his father, Harry Chandler, who had been its publisher since 1917. 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. [1], In 1966 Chandler received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. Staffing in Washington and Sacramento was expanded. His remarks were reported in publications from coast to coast. 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. During his tenure it would expand to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. Chandler liked the shotput and weightlifting, he once said, because they were individual sports, and he could be judged on his own merits. He died in 2002. And sooner or later Im afraid well have to align ourselves with one of those companies to ensure the long-term survival of The Times., When Tribune turned out to be that company, Chandler said, Of all the people, of all the media companies that Times Mirror could join, this is the most logical and probably the best company.. Chandler was the great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the blustery Civil War veteran who bought part-ownership of The Times in 1882, a year after it began publication, and was its publisher for 35 years. But William Thomas, who was Times editor when Chandler made his decision to step down as publisher, said he remembered sitting in a taxi with him in Madrid in 1975 before hed met Whitaker, when he was still married to Missy and hearing Otis say he wanted to give up the publishers job in three to five years. Until shortly before his death in 1973, Chandlers father had helped insulate him from those protests. When Chandler left the publishers office and again when he left the chairmans job, his former colleagues worried that without him, they would no longer be immune to corporate and outside pressures. If a newspaper, even a great newspaper like the Los Angeles Times, loses credibility with its community, with its readers, with its advertisers, with its shareholders, that is probably the most serious circumstance that I can possibly envision. I always had the feeling that I wasnt welcome in the building when Mark was in charge that maybe theyd have a guard try to throw me out if I tried to come in. By the time Thomas became editor in 1971, many of the major changes had been made, resistance had greatly diminished and Chandler was stepping back to take a broader view. In a controversial 1996 story in Vanity Fair, Chandler was quoted as criticizing his relatives as coupon clippers elitists bored with the problems of AIDS and the homeless and drive-by shootings. They wished The Times wouldnt cover those issues, and they werent interested in either the papers editorial quality or its social responsibility, he said. He died in May 1972 at age 47. But he also had a princes sense of entitlement, a sense that perhaps I dont have to do this every damn day, he added. Nothing but my kids is more important to me than the Los Angeles Times, he said in 1999. They asked me a lot of questions and made me feel welcome again, Chandler said a few days later. Chandler immediately excelled, breaking the school freshman record with a toss of 48 feet, 761/47 inches. Chandler pursued excellence in every aspect of his life, said Tom Johnson. Her father had been mayor of Long Beach. On it, neatly typed, was a seven-year executive training program, scheduled to begin that Sunday night. I thought Otis was committed in the same way, she said. Various Chandlers controlled about 65% of the Times Mirror voting stock before the sale to Tribune in 2000, and most of them love Willes, Otis said several months before those negotiations began. [2], On his 23rd birthday, Chandler proposed to his college sweetheart, Marilyn Brant, on the seventh hole of the Pebble Beach golf course. They never thought she was good enough to marry Norman, and she was out to prove them wrong, her son said several years after her death. Chandler always denied any conflict of interest, and he invariably emerged from these controversies with his reputation for personal integrity intact. Chandler was an exotic, at times mythic figure among the nations newspaper executives, most of whose exertions and excursions outside the boardroom were generally limited to golf courses and cruise ships. Ultimately, there was little that Chandler could or would do to influence the fate of The Times beyond this brief but dramatic entry into the fray. [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. His goal, he once quipped, was to make it a militant middle-of-the-road paper.. He was initially miserable; the other students all seemed richer, better-educated and more sophisticated. He said it was good for his back.. As a boy, he would stand alongside his father and grandfather at Hollywood Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever) in annual memorials to the victims of a bomb blast that wrecked the Times building in 1910, killing 20 workers. Chandlers primary role was to provide the impetus, framework and financial support for change, rather than dictating specifics. Compare DNA and explore genealogy for Otis Ashmore Chandler born 1891 Five Points, Banks, Georgia, United States died 1956 DeKalb, Georgia, United States including ancestors + children + Y-chromosome DNA + more in the free family tree community. He surfed. Otis enthusiastically supported Michael's racing career until a near-fatal crash while qualifying at Indianapolis in 1984. Their first child was a boy named Norman after Chandler's father. Chandler was just then becoming interested in big game hunting, and his approach to hiring was much the same: only go after the biggest and the best. I was a B student.). . Unencumbered by union contracts, Chandler made major technological improvements at The Times, shifting from traditional hot type letterpress production to more flexible photo-composition and offset printing, and making The Times the first major newspaper in the United States to computerize typesetting. Chandler retired as publisher in 1980 at the age of 52 to become chairman of Times Mirror, reducing his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the company. 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. [1], In 1990, Chandler was trampled by a musk ox in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Landsberg did additional reporting and rewriting of the text. Thats when I decided this was the business for me.. In 1995, when he was 68, his motorcycle collided with a tractor in New Zealand, leaving him with part of the big toe on his left foot missing, another toe severely damaged and the rest of the foot largely numb. As it happened, the consultants also recommended that, to ensure stability, the new publisher be capable of holding the job at least 15 years. He wanted the paper to take what he called more balls out positions, and he wanted us to change our position and editorialize against the war in Vietnam.. But as the children grew up and she had more time available, she embarked on a career of her own she got womens lib is how Chandler put it and that exacerbated tensions between them. 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. Lucy Otis (born Chandler) in MyHeritage family trees (OBRIEN Web Site (FamilySearch)) view all 19 Immediate Family Stephen Otis husband Arunah Otis son Caroline Graves daughter Calvin Otis son Alice Otis daughter Chandler Otis son Lucy Randall daughter Stephen Otis son James Otis son Seth Otis son Nathaniel Otis son James Otis son view all 15 Among them: the mate of the musk ox that nearly killed him in 1990. Knowing that he couldnt create a high-quality, widely respected news organization if he relied exclusively on wire service reports and his existing staff, he began hiring top reporters and editors from other major news organizations and opening Times bureaus around the world. Otis said he wanted a more assertive, more liberal editorial page, Day said. His son was perfectly willing, indeed eager, to do and spend whatever was necessary to achieve journalistic respectability. As much as Chandler remained interested in The Times, he immensely enjoyed his retirement years. 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. The disease is known for its fast progression. 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). As a Times columnist, he would become one of the most celebrated sportswriters ever. Southern California was considered a cultural backwater, and despite his familys vast wealth and power, Chandler felt like a hick. I loved being a reporter. Reporter Gene Blake produced a five-part expose, written in calm, matter-of-fact language. Many people wondered if, in retrospect, Chandlers entire tenure at The Times had compromised his passion for freedom if he would have been happier had he been outside all the time, surfing, hunting, riding and racing, instead of being stuffed into a suit, sitting behind a desk, making speeches and attending meetings. The decision stunned the staff and outside observers, many of whom expected him to serve much longer. Concerned by the growing competition from television, Chandler urged his editors to transform the paper into a regional daily newsmagazine that placed a high premium on analysis, interpretation and good writing not just covering the days events but putting them in context and doing so in a lively and compelling fashion. Otis Chandler was born on July 24, 1924. 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 was convinced that he had taken The Times about as far as he could, and he wanted more challenges and more freedom. Williams was 21 years older than Chandler and often pulled in his reins. Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 - February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. After the series was published, Otis asked for an editorial criticizing the Birchers. The Games took place in 1952. Thomas was largely responsible for the great length and literary style of many Times stories qualities for which the paper became both celebrated and criticized. Others argued that the negative attention that was focused on the paper, Willes and the rest of the Chandler family in the aftermath of Otis statement helped accelerate and crystallize the familys desire to sell The Times. 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. 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. But in the social pecking order of the Southern California elite, she was seen as a cut below the Chandlers, and they never let her forget it. President-elect Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, are honored at the Los Angeles Music Center in 1980 during an event hosted by Otis Chandler and his mother, Dorothy. He eventually recovered from serious head injuries. They wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. You transformed the entire staff, he said, and the whole place had a totally different attitude.. Only then did Chandler tell Thomas about himself and his family. When he lost, he delivered a diatribe that would long haunt him, bitterly denouncing the press coverage by which, it was widely realized, he meant The Times and promising, You wont have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference., Years later, Otis Chandler would insist that the paper wasnt as bad as some people said when I took over. He spent 1951 to 1953 on the ground in the Air Force, supervising sports and acting as co-captain of the Air Force track team at Camp Stoneman in the San Francisco Bay Area. One had only to visit the mens room in his car and wildlife museum its walls covered with posters of scantily clad women draped over shiny sports cars to realize that his ultra-masculinity wasnt limited to guns, barbells, fast cars and motorcycles. He saw them both as restraints on his freedom. Although Halberstam would later say, No single family dominates any other region of this country as the Chandlers have dominated California, Otis had a far-from-pampered upbringing and was never a man who could be described as effete. He always has to have a project. Otis Chandler will go down as one of the most important figures in newspaper history, said Dean Baquet, editor of the Los Angeles Times. Also, the name of Otis Chandlers first wife was incorrectly given as Marilyn Brandt. But by 1962, The Times had become a different institution. To put together his galaxy of star reporters, Otis Chandler employed what in much of the newspaper business amounts to a secret weapon money.. Sulzberger recalled decades later that he once walked into Chandlers office and found him hanging upside down in the doorway, like a bat. He said to me many times that he hadnt wanted to come to the paper in the first place, but he felt an obligation to his family to do it, said Robert F. Erburu, who succeeded Chandler as Times Mirror chairman. It wasnt as much fun.. He attended Dartmouth College, and on a dare, he jumped into a vat of starch that had frozen over during winter, which led to severe pneumonia. Chandler, he said, loved being publisher. I dont butt in.. 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. Updated: October 7, 2011 . 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. Chandler, who had retired 19 years prior, sent his message directly to reporters, to the dismay of the newspaper's management. The change that ignited the biggest debate was Willes announced intention to blow up, with a bazooka, if necessary, the wall that had traditionally separated and insulated the newsroom of the paper from the business department to avoid conflicts of interest. Then, on April 11, 1960, Norman Chandler invited more than 700 people to a luncheon at the Biltmore Bowl ballroom in downtown Los Angeles, where he promised a special announcement.. Over time, Chandler and others said, that began to wear on him. 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. [1] He was the son of Norman Chandler, his predecessor as publisher, and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, a patron of the arts and a Regent of the University of California. To grasp the breadth of the changes, it is necessary to understand what The Times had been. But it was Otis Chandler a world-class shotputter in college and a fierce competitor in every arena he entered who took charge of a paper that for decades had generated almost as much ridicule as revenue and transformed it into one of the best newspapers in the country. At a time when newspapers were becoming increasingly vulnerable to competition from the Internet, television, direct mail and other sources for information and advertising, Willes said it was imperative that they market themselves more aggressively and improve journalistically to make themselves more relevant to readers and more valuable to advertisers. At the age of 8, Chandler was thrown to the ground during a horseback riding lesson. 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