Otis Chandler

Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 – February 27, 2006) was best known as the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980. He was the son of Norman Chandler, his predecessor as publisher, his family having owned the newspaper since Harrison Gray Otis founded the company in 1882.

Life

Otis Chandler was born in Los Angeles, California on November 23, 1927, the only son of Norman Chandler and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, a patron of the arts and a Regent of the University of California. His great-grandfather, General Harrison Gray Otis, had bought the Los Angeles Times in 1886 and it had remained in the family ever since, used by them to further their political and financial goals.

Otis Chandler's father, grandson of General Otis, although wealthy did not believe in letting his son live a life of privilege. The young Otis worked hard on his family's ranch during summer vacations. Instead of buying him a car when he reached the age of sixteen, his father sent him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, far from the sunshine and surfing his California peers were enjoying. Rising to the challenge, Otis found recognition in sports, with positions on the basketball, soccer, and track teams. He also experienced a "social awakening" at Andover, coming to appreciate all types of people through his encounters with classmates of different cultures and races.

In 1946, Chandler enrolled in his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, where he majored in history, minored in journalism, and participated in Navy Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He continued his athletics, and became a world-class shot putter; only a sprained wrist kept him from competing for the United States in the Olympic Games.

After graduating from Stanford, Chandler served in the U. S. Air Force from 1951 to 1953. He married Marilyn Brant, known as Missy, and they had one son, Norman.

On his discharge from the Air Force, his father set him on a seven-year training program in which Chandler experienced every aspect the newspaper business from the very bottom through production, circulation, mailroom, mechanical, advertising, and the newsroom. Finally he reached the executive ranks, becoming marketing manager of theLA Times in 1959. Then, on April 11, 1960, Norman Chandler named his son publisher.

During his twenty-year tenure as publisher, Otis Chandler transformed the LA Times. He sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He recreated the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times and The Washington Post. During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than in the previous nine decades combined.

Norman's wife, heiress and fellow Stanford University graduate Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. In 1966 Chandler received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

He died of Lewy body disease at age 78.

Work

LA Times

In 1960, Otis Chandler 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 from a conservative to a "progressive" publication.

In 1980, he became chairman of Times Mirror and reduced his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the company. He handed control to people outside the family in the mid-1980s and became involved in other interests such as the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, which he founded in Oxnard, California in 1987 and was rarely open to the public. His son Mike was a race car driver in the CART Championship Car series, against Otis' wishes.

Chandler reentered 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. The paper's Sunday magazine on Oct. 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. Such special issues are financial windfall for the Times, generating a record $2 million in ad revenue. But as one of the arena's 10 "founding partners," the paper had agreed to share the issue's ad revenue with the Staples Center without telling its reporters or readers about the fiscal arrangement. Chandler, who had retired 19 years prior, sent his message directly to reporters, to the dismay of the newspaper's management. His successors, he said, had been "unbelievably stupid" and caused "the most serious single threat to the future" of the paper his family had bought in 1882 for this dangerous compromise of the paper's objectivity.

In the late 1990s, he became critical of a perceived decline in the Times. He was not involved in negotiations by other members of the Chandler family for the sale of the Times to the Tribune Company but welcomed the outcome.

Vintage Museum

The Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlfe, more commonly referred to as The Vintage Museum or The Chandler Museum was the primary showcase for the collections of Otis Chandler since its foundation in 1987. The museum was located in Oxnard, California and home to Otis Chandler's extensive collection of vintage and rare automobiles, motorcycles and trains as well as fine art and wildlife game. After Chandler died, the collection was auctioned off in late 2006.

The museum's automobile inventory included extremely rare classic, antique, and sports cars. At various points in the museum's history, there was also an Ahrens-Fox pumper fire truck; a Mack truck and an 1894 Baldwin steam locomotive.

The museum's sizeable motorcycle collection covered two floors of the museum. Over 50 makers were represented including Ace, Crocker, Iver Johnston, Indian, Vincent and Brough and over 80 years of the most important Harley-Davidson models ever built.

On October 21, 2006, the collection was auctioned off by Gooding & Company. The auction fetched over $36 million, and set a record for a single day automotive auction.

Legacy

David Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book The Powers That Be: "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."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Shaw, David, and Mitchell Landsberg. L.A. Icon Otis Chandler Dies at 78. Los Angeles Times (February 27, 2006). Retrieved July 9, 2008.
• "Otis Chandler" Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2001. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
• Pease, Theresa. Ahead of the Times Andover Bulletin Online 93(4) (Summer 2000). Retrieved July 9, 2008.
• McDougal, Dennis. Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty. Da Capo Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0306811616
• Kimes, Beverly Rae, and Randy Leffingwell. Otis Chandler: The Pursuit of Uncommon Excellence. Art Center College of Design, 2007. ISBN 978-0961870515

External links

• Otis Chandler, 78; transformed L.A. Times into a leading paper. The Boston Globe.
• Otis Chandler, Publisher Who Transformed Los Angeles Times, Dies at 78. New York Times.
• Former 'L.A. Times' publisher Otis Chandler dies at 78 USA Today.

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