It doesn't sound so terrible today, but it was a big deal then.". she asked. The Otis Chandler era at the L.A. Times began on April 11, 1960, when his father introduced him as the new publisher. The daughter of a Long Beach department store magnate (and later mayor), she was not of the same class as the Chandlers, and her husbands siblings viewed her as an interloper. What's most unfortunate about the family split, in my opinion, is that my uncle John would probably have gotten along with his second cousin Otis very well. My uncle John tells me that Buffie Chandler did attend my grandmother's funeral in 1977 (though she may have left before the service ended). This is the central mystery of his life. But he came close. In 1992, he resigned as chairman of the Times Mirror executive committee. Next time I wont worry about how I will pay the the rent a good idea needs focus and 100% of your execution. "No Easterner can understand what it has meant in Californiato be a Chandler,"David Halberstam wrote in a famous run-on sentence from his media history, The Powers That Be, "for no single family dominates any major region of the country as the Chandlers have dominated California, it would take in the East a combination of the Rockefellers and the Sulzbergers to match their power and influence.". Our mission is to get people excited about reading, and I think the way that generally happens is through social recommendations so we are working on ways to do book discovery that leverages the wisdom of the masses yet keeps the human element. Otis Chandler (1927-2006), Publisher of the Los Angeles Times (1960 and 1980) and great-grandson of Harrison Gray Otis Elwell Stephen Otis (1838-1909), United States of America General who served in the Philippines late in the Spanish-American War and during the Philippine-American War. Biden said he believes his plan to forgive millions of borrowers student loans is on the right side of the law, a day after the courts conservative majority seemed highly skeptical of the Bidens Administrations argument for the debt relief program. In 2000, Tribune Co. acquired L.A. Times parent Times Mirror Co., which by then also owned six other daily newspapers. If you ever get the chance, read the Otis Chandler biography "Privileged Son" by Dennis McDougal. He clearly loves his Oxnard museum, with its incongruous dioramas depicting the "Grand Slam of American Sheep" -- Chandler bagged them all -- parked next to Joan Crawford's handmade Cadillac town car. Philip Chandler and Harrison Chandler, as well as a sister, Mabel Otis Booth. McDougal has lectured in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, Stanford, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. Russias War On Ukraine: Daily News And Information From Ukraine, The Real Players Of Formula One: Drive To Survive Season 5, Scott Adams Undoing: A Timeline Of The Dilbert Cartoonists Fall From Grace. He finished in the top ten twice, with his best finish in 4th position in 1981 at Riverside. ), whose suspension weeks ago prompted Elon Musk to change Twitters rules. Chandler is spending several hours each Tuesday with Dennis McDougal, a former Los Angeles Times writer who is preparing a biography of him to be published next year. Lacking a male heir, Otis groomed Harry Chandler, who sometimes colluded with wealthy downtown business interests. On the day of my visit, Chandler was prepping the space for a large charity bash, which meant getting several dozen gazelle and impala heads off the floor and onto the walls, and ridding the men's bathroom of the girlie posters that invariably festoon the work areas of car and motorcycle aficionados. Interest in the skilful, highly technical Spanish midfielder will only increase after a surge in form. The scandal also shook Otis Chandler, prompting his first public comment on Times management in almost a decade. A near head-on crash in practice for the 1984 race left him in a coma for several days and prematurely ended his career. The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. Willes vowed to tear down that wall. Yes we are all nostalgic for the feel of print books, but I think we will come around when we see that ideas can be better conveyed through digital, interactive ebooks. Trusted information source for millions of people worldwide. Contact profile manager; View family tree; Problem with this page? Hes a ham-fisted writer with a penchant for cliches and mixed metaphors. The paper and the company, of course, were never the same. In 1894, he wed the daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Harrison Gray Otis and proceeded to build a media empire. The magazine was funded, in part, by the arena itself. Whats missing is how a rich Southern California jock, who showed no passion for the family business as a young man, suddenly fell in love with his own newspaper and understood at some elemental level that journalism is more than a business; its also a public trust. Otis Chandler was born in 1920s. Chandler knew all this because he had done it, and when, late in the Willes regime, he finally decided to speak out against the failed stewards of his legacy at the Times, his most bitter accusation was: They didn't know what they were doing. I'd slide down a chute from the mail room with the bundles into the trucks. He was best known for being a Family Member. Closing, bitter minutes ask how a family that virtually created the city could allow the paper that defined that city to crumble a question that seems even weightier given American journalisms current crisis. Over the years, some name-calling ensued. Suddenly, everything was different. Please comment on the subject of the blog post itself. After some back-and-forth polishing, Chandler asked Boyarsky to read the memo out loud in the newsroom. Eventually, Chandler used the proceeds to snap up quality papers in other markets: the Dallas Times Herald (later sold), the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courantand Long Island's Newsday. 326 Galvez Street "I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't read it," Boyarsky later said. Chandler made improvement of the paper's quality a top priority, succeeding in raising the product's reputation, as well as its profit margins. In 1945, her husband became publisher of the Times, a position he held until he was succeeded by their son, Otis, in 1960. Or was it, as some have suggested, a palace coup engineered by members of the family who had always resented Otis and the papers newly moderate politics? An investigative series -- unusual in itself -- broke national news about the Teamsters Pension Fund even before attorney general Robert Kennedy's racket-busters climbed on Jimmy Hoffa's back. McDougal hints that Otis grew to resent his mother for using him in her wars with her in-laws, but he never examines how this might have shaped his behavior. Yes, the Los Angeles Times remains one of the best papers in the country, but the Otis drive to push The New York Times off its perch, as he once famously put it--a drive that led him to increase the editorial budget by nearly 1,000% in his first 10 years--has been replaced by more modest goals. His own mother, and the business allies who contributed to her beloved Music Center, pressured him to fire the Times music critic, Martin Bernheimer. There is no more powerful thing in the world than an idea, and long-form books are the best conveyors of ideas. "This trust is dearer than life itself." Norman, Harrys bland and self-effacing son, didnt so much expand the empire as secure it. Please check back soon for updates. Otis Chandler was going into the newspaper business. 2023 Variety Media, LLC. The central point is that the newspaper owner was in fact a visionary urban developer and epic capitalist, for whom the paper was a mere device for greater ends. In 1708, he was chosen a member of Her Majesty's Council (at the time, the highest position a native could achieve) and was annually reelected until his death in 1727. Ruthless and strait-laced, he assured the Chandlers family wealth for generations to come. Still, he sometimes feared that his passion for surfing would be remembered more than his accomplishments at the Times. The Los Angeles Times rise as, first, the engine of Southern Californias profound economic boom and, second, a world-class newspaper, is recounted by filmmaker Peter Jones as an unfolding tragedy in Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers & Their Times. Jones has made this definitive look at the paper and the Chandler family with the encyclopedic gravitas of Ken Burns docs, directing slow-boiling anger at the notoriously private Chandler family, whose decisions drove a great newspaper into the ground. Today, the family's fortune is held in multiple trusts worth an estimated $4.2 billion. . I can't help but think that it's a paper without a soul, now that they have lost the family behind it. By the end of his tenure, only The New York Times would have more domestic and foreign bureaus or a bigger Washington staff than the Los Angeles Times. After a stint in the Air Force, he and Missy returned to his parents' house in 1953 with their two young sons. The Chandlers kept enough stock (they owned almost 30 percent at the time of the Tribune sale) to control the company. She left seven children Mrs. Roger Goodan (Alice May), Mrs. Earle E. Crowe (Constance), Mrs. John J. Garland (Helen), Mrs. James G. Boswell (Ruth), Norman Chandler. His creation, the modern Los Angeles Times, was seated right up there with the nation's great newspapers -- the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal -- pecking away. Sometimes I read Techcrunch, but my favorite Techcrunch article is about how people should read more Science Fiction. His second wife, Bettina, is not particularly enthusiastic about his dangerous trips into the Great Beyond. In the most notorious incident in the citys history, the General and his son-in-law formed a syndicate that snatched water from the Owens Valley and diverted it to Los Angeles. The strengths of this sign are being generous, idealistic, sense of humor, while weaknesses can be to promise more than can deliver, impatient and say anything no matter how undiplomatic. But that campaign is skimmed over in favor of a more general overview of the Chandler family as a bulwark of extreme right-wing politics, the sort that supported the anticommunist John Birch Society while also helping forge the career of Richard Nixon. . She may have single-handedly raised the money for the Music Center and transformed Los Angeles cultural life, but she was a cold and petty tyrant, according to McDougal. Contact Information The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108, Phone: (626) 405-2191; Email: reference@huntington.org, www.huntington.org Access-restricted-item true Addeddate For something more modern, The Big Short is a book anyone who lived through the economic depression in 2008 should read. Chandler's crew published a scathing assessment of the hate-mongering John Birch Society, a popular and influential force in Southern California and among his Chandler cousins. 2023 Forbes Media LLC. At most newspapers, there is a "wall," with the writers and editors on one side and the business staffers who sell advertising on the other. "His reign at the Los Angeles Times was the newspaper's Camelot," McDougal says. At the very least, I wanted to know if it could serve manufacturers in any way. It doesn't gloss over Otis Chandler's flaws, but nonetheless, I think that most people who read the book will come away with affection and respect for the man. (Crawford replaced all of the interior chrome fixtures with pewter so photographers couldn't take pictures of her distorted reflection in the door handles.) The city and the newspaper are so intertwined, Dennis McDougal points out in Privileged Son, his sprawling history of The Times, that its impossible to separate the two. Despite his family's wealth his parents did not spoil him with gifts, but instead insisted he work in the 10-acre citrus ranch they owned in . He is the prince who walks among his people and vows to reform his kingdom. Otis is originated from United States. Although the story of the Chandlers is a good one, The Chandlers And Their Times is magnificent. Interview segments and archival selections are absolutely aces, as is Liev Schreibers narration. In 1944, he handed the reins of the publishing empire to son Norman, who in turn passed it on to his son Otis in 1960. We will continue to update information on Otis Chandlers parents. Burke was accused of using Chandler's influence to promote an oil company stock and paying him a finder's fee for moneys raised. [citation needed] Five years later, Otis unexpectedly stepped down as chairman, and for many the golden age was over. In political contests, the Times declined to cover the Democratic candidate; it let the liberal newspapers handle that chore. The possibilities for innovation when we all have location-aware smart-phones in our pockets are endless. Behind me -- dead, thank heavens -- stands an equally gigantic polar bear ("Kotzebue, Alaska; Record Book Size; February 1964") that Chandler shot, then gutted on an arctic ice floe before he and his guide dragged the 300-pound carcass back to their tiny plane, 5 miles away. He is the prince who walks among his people and vows to reform his kingdom. Politicians and the police were there to protect their interests and, more than anything else, those interests revolved around the citys rapid growth. By 1983 the paper was on Time's 10-best list. Like a gargantuan 19th century novel, the saga of the Los Angeles Times is full of larger-than-life figures and historic sweep, betrayal and intrigue, pettiness and triumph. In 1998, at age 71, Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a Ferrari automobile on the road in Oxnard. When the news leaked out -- and made the front page of the New York Times -- it rocked the paper's newsroom. Collection Title: Chandler Family History Collection Digitized by California Audiovisual Preservation Project. Some plans, such as expanding the transportation grid, were above-board; others, such as the infamous plot to con Owens Valley farmers out of their water (told here with Jerry Goldsmiths Chinatown score on the soundtrack), were not. A coma for several days and prematurely ended his career, and long-form books are best! Story of the new York Times -- it rocked the otis chandler grandchildren was on time 's 10-best list polishing... Journalism and creative writing at UCLA, Stanford, and for many the golden age was over they! Arena itself. change Twitters rules trusts worth an estimated $ 4.2 billion Galvez ``. 2000, Tribune Co. acquired L.A. 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