Otis Chandler
Otis Chandler | |
---|---|
Los Angeles, California | |
Died | February 27, 2006 | (aged 78)
Alma mater | Stanford University |
Occupation | Publisher |
Spouse(s) | Marilyn "Missy" Chandler, nee Brant (June 1951–July 1981) Bettina Chandler, nee Whitaker (August 1981–February 2006, his death) |
Children | 5, including Mike Chandler |
Parent(s) | Dorothy Buffum Chandler Norman Chandler |
Relatives | Charles Abel Buffum (grandfather) Harrison Gray Otis (great-grandfather) Eliza Ann Otis (great-grandmother) Marian Otis Chandler (grandmother) |
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. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position.[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. "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.[1]
Family pedigree
Chandler's family owned a stake in the newspaper since his great-grandfather
Chandler was raised to share his family's distaste for
"Oats" was Chandler's nickname within the family.[1]
Times editorial page editor Anthony Day observed that Chandler "had been raised to be a prince".[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". 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".[1]
Youth
Childhood
Chandler was raised on a 10-acre (40,000 m2) citrus ranch in Sierra Madre owned by his parents. Despite his family's wealth, Chandler's father insisted that he perform field labor and did not spoil him with gifts. There Chandler spent much of his time alone, later in life unable to name a single childhood friend.[1] At the age of 8, Chandler was thrown to the ground during a horseback riding lesson. His mother rushed him to a hospital, where doctors initially reported he was dead. His mother rushed him to a second hospital, where a doctor she knew revived him with an adrenaline shot to the heart.[1]
Education and athletics
Chandler first attended the
Chandler enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, in 1946. Like his father, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Sigma Rho chapter).[2] At Stanford he was a successful shot putter. He broke the freshman school record with a toss of 48 feet (15 m), 761/47 inches. At 6-foot 3-inches (190 cm) tall, after bulking-up to and 220 pounds he won the Pacific Coast Conference title and finished second in the nation during his senior year with a toss of 57 feet (17 m), 63/47 of an inch while serving as his team's captain. As a weightlifter, Chandler finished third in the nation competing in the heavyweight division.[1]
A sprained wrist kept him from competing as a shot putter for the United States in the 1952 Summer Olympics.[1][2]
Early adulthood
After graduation, Chandler tried to enroll in an Air Force training program, but was turned down because he was too large to fit in the cockpit of a jet.[1] Instead, he spent 1951 to 1953 in the Air Force's ground service, as a co-captain of the track team and supervisor of athletics and drama at Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, California.[2]
On his 23rd birthday, Chandler proposed to his college sweetheart, Marilyn Brant, on the seventh hole of the
Preparation for power
Chandler visited The Times frequently as a child, sliding down chutes that were used to drop papers to delivery trucks. While in college, he sometimes worked summers at the paper, most often moving printing plates and other heavy equipment. Despite that, Chandler did not envision journalism as a career during his youth; instead, he often said he would like to become a doctor. After leaving the Air Force in 1953, he had little direction for his career. 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. He started work right away as a pressroom apprentice on the graveyard shift. The pay was $48 a week. 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]
Professional career
In 1960, he became publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He quickly increased the budget of the paper, allowing it to expand its coverage. This coincided with the shift of the paper's editorial stance from overtly conservative to independent. Under Otis Chandler, The Times became a critically lauded newspaper.
When Chandler took the job, the paper had only two outside offices. During his tenure it would expand to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus.[1]
In 1966 Chandler received the
In 1986, Chandler won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to honor his years of service to the newspaper.[3]
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).
Retirement
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
He was not involved in negotiations by other members of the Chandler family to sell The Times to
Chandler died at his home in
Recreation
Chandler was an enthusiastic athlete and thrill seeker, an image he actively cultivated. He was featured on the cover of sporting magazines like
On a 1964 safari in Mozambique, an elephant charged his party. After the guide missed his shot and fled, Chandler shot the elephant when it was only 10 yards away, preventing himself and his wife from being trampled.[1]
In 1990, Chandler was trampled by a
In 1998, at age 71, Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a
His son,
References
- ^ The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 23, 2008.
- ^ a b c "Publisher Who Couldn't Get Enough Competition". Stanford Magazine. May–June 2006. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
- ^ Arizona State University. "Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication". Retrieved November 23, 2016.
- Time Magazine. Archived from the originalon March 8, 2008.
Further reading
- Coleridge, Nicholas (March 1994). Paper Tigers: The Latest, Greatest Newspaper Tycoons (1st Carol Pub. Group ed.). Secaucus, N.J: Birch Lane Press. ISBN 9781559722155.
- ISSN 0028-792X. (later included in Didion's 1992 essay collection After Henryunder the title "Times Mirror Square").
- ISBN 0394503813.
External links
- David Shaw and Mitchell Landsberg, "LA Icon Otis Chandler dies at 78", Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2006
- "Otis Chandler", Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2001. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.
- Gentile, Gary (February 28, 2006). "Otis Chandler, 78; transformed L.A. Times into a leading paper". The Boston Globe.
- Kandell, Jonathan (February 28, 2006). "Otis Chandler, Publisher Who Transformed Los Angeles Times, Dies at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved May 20, 2010.