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. Husband of Bettina Chandler Williams wrote a new one, warning that the Birchers extremism and smear tactics were subversive acts that could sow distrust and weaken the very strong case for conservatism. Chandler signed it and published it on Page 1. By the time he enrolled at Stanford University in 1946, he weighed about 200 pounds. He said it was good for his back.. The night he arrived home, his young familys possessions crammed into a used station wagon and rented trailer, his mother and father welcomed him enthusiastically. Although all three of his sons worked at the paper for varying periods, none ascended into the top executive ranks. There were so many changes going on, and I think if we hadnt kept up with the flow, The Times wouldnt have continued to do well financially Im glad we did what we did.. A public memorial will be held Monday at All Saints Church in Pasadena. His mother rushed him to a second hospital, where a doctor she knew revived him with an adrenaline shot to the heart. Chandlers wife, Bettina, was with him. To grasp the breadth of the changes, it is necessary to understand what The Times had been. [1] 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.. Historical Person Search Search Search Results Results Otis Chandler (1919 - 1980) Try FREE for 14 days Try FREE for 14 days How do we create a person's profile? 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 shift on the editorial page came as the region itself, once dependably Republican, was becoming less conservative. In August 1972, the Wall Street Journal broke the story, which dragged on for several years before a federal court sentenced Burke to 30 months in prison. He died in 2002. Some critics felt that his zeal for national recognition led The Times to underemphasize local news, particularly about minority communities. Despite the enormous difference in their socioeconomic status, the two remained close friends for more than 30 years. The Hearst paper was subsequently hit by a devastating strike and ceased publication in 1989. [1], Times editorial page editor Anthony Day observed that Chandler "had been raised to be a prince". 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. 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. About that time, Otis began telling Nick Williams, the editor of the paper, the kinds of improvements he envisioned making if and when he had the authority. FOR THE RECORD:In an earlier version of this article, the date of the Helsinki Olympic Games was incorrectly given as 1948. My style was to do the job and push the boundaries, and once Otis realized I knew what I was doing, he let me do it, Thomas said. Its too big, its too stuffy. 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. Six weeks later, on the day that John Puerner of Tribune Co. took over as publisher of The Times, Chandler had dinner with Puerner and Jack Fuller, then-president of Tribune Publishing at their invitation. Was the daughter of General Harrison Gray Otis and Secretary of the Times-Mirror Company (formerly the publishing company of the Los Angeles Times ). 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. Also, the name of Otis Chandlers first wife was incorrectly given as Marilyn Brandt. On that wisp of a lure, the room filled up with the cream of the Southern California establishment: corporate heads, college presidents, prominent lawyers and judges, Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson, members of the county Board of Supervisors, former California Gov. Within an hour, I had gathered things up in my briefcase, told my secretary, Well, we can shine those afternoon meetings off, and headed for Dana Point.., In a speech to a hunting conference in 1980, he described some of his other outdoor pursuits: I am primarily a gun hunter, both rifle and shotgun. Chandler always denied any conflict of interest, and he invariably emerged from these controversies with his reputation for personal integrity intact. On arrival, she encountered a doctor she knew, and he revived the boy with a shot of adrenaline in the heart. Sulzberger recalled decades later that he once walked into Chandlers office and found him hanging upside down in the doorway, like a bat. At the time of her death in 1997, she had eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. As it happened, the consultants also recommended that, to ensure stability, the new publisher be capable of holding the job at least 15 years. Despite Chandlers worries and despite what he said was a constant stream of calls and letters from Times executives past and present, asking him to do something about the direction of the newspaper, he made no real effort for most of Willes tenure to influence what was happening at Times Mirror Square. While he was hunting in Mozambique in 1964, an elephant charged him, his wife and their guide. Critics also thought his position at the top of the citys power structure prevented The Times from aggressively investigating that establishment. To put together his galaxy of star reporters, Otis Chandler employed what in much of the newspaper business amounts to a secret weapon money.. In 1948 the Chandler family had started a second newspaper, an afternoon tabloid called the Los Angeles Mirror, and as part of his training program, Otis worked there too. The Birchers argued that presidents Eisenhower, Truman and Franklin Roosevelt were either Communists or Communist dupes. 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. [1], In 1966 Chandler received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. He lifted weights three times a week in his home gym. The Chandlers had no rival as the most powerful family in Southern California. But most of his friends and associates said he didnt really have his heart in his new jobs. Otis enthusiastically supported Michael's racing career until a near-fatal crash while qualifying at Indianapolis in 1984. Like his father before him, he thought he should concentrate on companywide responsibilities, by succeeding Franklin D. Murphy as chairman of the Times Mirror board. Heres a man who led a full life, said Otis Booth, his cousin and longtime hunting companion. One of the first examples came in 1961, when The Times hired Jim Murray as a sports columnist. 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. People who knew the Chandlers well say Otis first wife was enormously competitive. The explosion was blamed on union militants, and, Otis once said, I was raised to hate the unions. (He later mellowed on that topic, although he always opposed unionization at The Times.). 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. 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. Under Otis Chandler, The Times became a critically lauded newspaper. Although the decision stunned her, friends said they had long seen the breakup coming. Otis Chandler at the Los Angeles Times in 2003 with a photo of his mother, Dorothy Chandler, in the backgorund. Otis has gone surfing, and hes not coming back, Noel Greenwood, then senior editor of The Times, said in 1991, almost four years before Willes took over and eight years before Staples erupted. Many had led quietly productive lives outside the newspaper industry and had tried to keep their complaints about cousin Otis and The Times within the family circle. Landsberg did additional reporting and rewriting of the text. Chandler later praised his editor for frequently reminding a young publisher that you cant change a whole paper overnight.. I was strictly a tall, skinny blond kid from California.. He wrote a statement, dictated it to Bill Boyarsky, then city editor, and asked that it be read aloud to the newsroom staff. Overnight, copies of an old photo of Chandler were pinned and taped by the dozens to pillars and walls and bulletin boards throughout the newsroom, where some still remain. Sure, like any business executive, there were times when I would like to have been away from it all, free of responsibilities. 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. [1], Chandler died at his home in Ojai at the age of 78 due to the effects of Lewy body disease, seven months after his diagnosis. 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". I said he was a great man who made this paper what it was, Boyarsky would say later. Ruth Chandler 1897-1987. Chandlers primary role was to provide the impetus, framework and financial support for change, rather than dictating specifics. [2] In 1945, her husband became publisher of the Times, a position he held until he was succeeded by their son, Otis, in 1960. Two years later, he was made marketing manager of The Times. And it became clear over the years that he did not have any such intention. Her father had been mayor of Long Beach. 2443 E Peach Tree Drive is currently listed for rent at $1,995 and was received on February 28, 2023. He also complained that the papers editor and publisher never try to come up with new ways to cut the deficit. Almost 20 years after their divorce, the happily remarried Marilyn Brant DeYoung said she didnt think shed been competitive with Chandler, except on the tennis court, where I did get upset when he beat me. She said they had a wonderful marriage, and he was an involved father, especially when he was younger, before he was publisher.. [1], Chandler visited The Times frequently as a child, sliding down chutes that were used to drop papers to delivery trucks. 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. We wouldnt be working here if it werent for him.. After the papers decision to endorse Nixon for reelection as president in 1972 caused a newsroom firestorm, The Times announced in 1973 that it would no longer routinely endorse candidates for president, governor or U.S. senator. Seldom has a newspaper had such an opportunity to meld the best of three staffs. 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. They also gave me quiet time so I could really think. Chandler had had earlier problems with his health, suffering from prostate cancer in 1989 and a 1998 heart attack. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. Big, blond and broad-shouldered, Chandler looked more like a Muscle Beach habitue-turned-movie star than a corporate entrepreneur on a journalistic mission. 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. 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. 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. Only then did Chandler tell Thomas about himself and his family. Together, he wrote to Johnson after the changing of the guard, we are going to push the New York Times off its perch.. But he did send memos to Williams, the editor, periodically in his early years as publisher criticizing the business and sports sections, for example, and complaining about the content and design of the Sunday magazine, then as now called West. Chandler was never a meddler or an intruder. He gradually worked his way through every department at the paper: production, circulation, the mailroom, mechanical, advertising, the newsroom. It may sound strange for a Chandler to say this, he said in one such conversation, but I dont think my family and the other people running the company are looking ahead enough to the Internet and other new media. You transformed the entire staff, he said, and the whole place had a totally different attitude.. 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). 1. When he went home after his time in the Air Force, though, he didnt envision journalism as his lifes work. But even though the paper and the company has been sold, it feels to me like Im home again.. As he did in every posting at The Times, he filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts on possible improvements. Research genealogy for Otis Chandler of Duxbury, Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States, as well as other members of the Chandler family, on Ancestry. [1], A sprained wrist kept him from competing as a shot putter for the United States in the 1952 Summer Olympics. Both Thomas and Johnson said he hated being chairman. The GeoTek affair also damaged Chandler physically. He was skinny all right 6 feet 1, 155 pounds but he played varsity soccer and basketball, high-jumped and ran the mile, and his successes gave him an identity. 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. Thats not in my nature, he said. 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. He was initially miserable; the other students all seemed richer, better-educated and more sophisticated. Chandler knew and trusted Burke. Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. During his tenure it would expand to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. They wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. Or did it, in some way, lead the region into change? Hes restless. 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. In college, he had sometimes worked summers at the paper, most often using his physical strength to move printing plates and other heavy items and equipment. He entered a six-hour endurance race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., teamed with John Thomas, his motorcycle buddy and Porsche mechanic, who had long raced cars himself. Chandlers reign as publisher was not an uninterrupted, 20-year victory lap. Updated: October 7, 2011 . But by 1962, The Times had become a different institution. [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. He said he didnt regret the 40 years he spent here. 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