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. They later divorced.

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.

In 1980, Chandler stepped down from the position of publisher. Still athletic and always seeking new challenges, he turned his hobbies of riding motorcycles and driving cars first into professional auto racing and then, in 1987, he established the Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife. He married again, in 1981, to Bettina Whitaker whom he had met at Watkins Glen, New York, where he drove an endurance race.

Otis Chandler died on February 27, 2006 of the degenerative disease, Lewy body disease, at age 78.

Work

Otis Chandler is known as an "athlete, sportsman, businessman, philanthropist, patron, collector, and journalist who pursued uncompromising standards of excellence in all that he did." He is most well known for his tenure as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the fourth and last generation of the family who owned the paper for over a century.

LA Times

Otis Chandler became publisher of the Los Angeles Times in 1960, appointed by his father, Norman Chandler, following a rigorous seven-year period in which he experienced every aspect of the running the newspaper. Under Chandler's leadership the paper won nine Pulitzer Prizes, expanded from two to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus, and doubled its circulation. He transformed the paper from a partisan local paper into one of the most widely read and respected newspapers in the country:

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.

Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business," Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. The paper had previously employed white people only, but Chandler initiated diversity in hiring practices. He also changed the political stance of the paper from the Republican position eschewed by his predecessors to a more centrist approach, with Chandler making efforts to become personally acquainted with "everyone who was important in the world." He also

In 1980, he left the position of publisher to became chairman of Times Mirror and greatly reduced his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the company. He handed control to people outside the family in the mid-1980s.

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 sports arena in downtown Los Angeles when the paper shared a financial interest in the property. The paper's 168-page Sunday magazine on October 10, 1999 was a special issue devoted to the new Staples Center, an issue that brought tremendous advertising revenue. An arrangement had been made whereby the LA Times shared the profits with the Staples Center as a "founding partner." The editors and writers of the issue were not informed of the agreement, which breached the previously impenetrable wall that traditionally separated advertising from journalistic functions at American newspapers.

Chandler sent his statement directly to to the newsroom staff, 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. Chandler's words were like a bombshell. He said that this "fiasco" was

probably the single most devastating period in the history of this great newspaper. 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. Respect and credibility for a newspaper is irreplaceable.

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

In the words of Dean Baquet, former editor of the LA Times:

Otis Chandler will go down as one of the most important figures in newspaper history. He built a newspaper that was as great as the city it covers. He set his sights on a goal—making The Times one of the two or three great American papers—and he pulled it off.

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
• Halberstam, David. The Powers That Be. University of Illinois Press, 2000. ISBN 0252069412

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.

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Otis_Chandler  ^history
• Chandler_Vintage_Museum_of_Transportation_and_Wildlife  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Otis Chandler"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.