Posted on 02/27/2006 6:16:41 AM PST by calcowgirl
LOS ANGELES - Otis Chandler, who transformed his family's Los Angeles Times from a provincial, conservative paper into a respected national media voice, died Monday. He was 78.
Chandler died at his home in Ojai, said Tom Johnson, who had succeeded Chandler as publisher. He said Chandler had been suffering from a neurological disorder known as Lewy body disease.
Chandler was the scion of a family that wielded financial and political power in the Los Angeles area for decades.
With his blond hair, weightlifter physique and love of surfing, he was a quintessential Californian of his generation. As a publisher, he spent most of his career chafing against what he sensed was an East Coast bias against Los Angeles and fought to elevate the Los Angeles Times.
"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," wrote David Halberstam in his 1979 book "The Powers that Be."
Chandler continued to cast a large shadow over the Times long after he resigned as the paper's publisher in 1980 after 20 years at the helm.
He left as chairman in 1985 but returned as a newsroom hero in 2000, publicly chiding the paper's management, which he blamed for an embarrassing scandal and severe cost-cutting that damaged its reputation. Soon after, the Chandler Family Trust sold newspaper parent company Times Mirror Co. to the Tribune Co.
"I was building up a hell of a head of steam," he said in an interview in The New York Times in 2000. "The Times is not as dear to me as my own family, but it's close."
Chandler was groomed from an early age to take control of his family's newspaper. He worked as a printer's apprentice, reporter and in the advertising and circulation departments. In 1960, he succeeded his father as publisher at age 33.
The paper was considered parochial and partisan, a mouthpiece for conservative political causes.
Almost immediately, Chandler initiated changes designed to fulfill his goal of making the paper one of the country's best. He moved the paper toward the political center and angered conservative allies - and family members - by publishing a series of stories on the right-wing John Birch Society.
He hired more reporters, raised salaries, opened overseas bureaus and beefed up the paper's coverage of Washington, D.C. His efforts resulted in the Times winning seven Pulitzer prizes during his tenure.
Johnson said Chandler's wife, Bettina, was with him when he died.
Nope, no anti-conservative bias there!
And the funny part is, they do not see it.
No, he didn't. He transformed a respected conservative paper into a leftist rag. Believe it or not, as recently as 1964, the Times was one of the few large newspapers to endorse Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) for president.
He probably died of heart-break at what has been done to a previously fine newspaper.
Lewy body disease is a dementia which is caused by damage in the brain. It is similar to Alzheimer's disease, but symptoms are typically different on close examination, with different signs found in the brain after death. The cause is unknown.
Lewy body disease has relatively recently been accepted as a separate disease in its own right.
The disease gets its name because of the deposits which are found in the brain after death (named after the doctor who first wrote about them). Lewy bodies are round deposits which contain damaged nerve cells. They are probably formed as the cells try to protect themselves from attack.
It is increasingly important to diagnose such conditions accurately as new drugs are developed which may be more effective in some types of dementia than in others.
What are the symptoms?
The dementia associated with Lewy body disease affects:
memory
language
the ability to judge distances
the ability to carry out simple actions
the ability to reason.
People with this form of dementia suffer hallucinations for example seeing a person or pet on a bed or a chair when nothing is there.
They may suffer from falls for no apparent reason, because their ability to judge distances and make movements and actions accurately is disrupted.
They may develop some Parkinson type symptoms such as slowness of movement, stiffness and tremor. In a few cases heart rate and blood pressure are affected. The abilities of the affected person often fluctuate from hour to hour, and over weeks and months. This sometimes causes carers to think that the person is putting on their confusion.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/vob/alzheimers/information/lewbody.htm#What
Sorry to hear of his death. I lived the first 60 years of my life in the LA area and read the LA Times daily for most of those years. He was an interesting and complex person. At Stanford he was a world class shot putter. I did not agree with the direction he took the paper but I understand why he did it. "Privileged Son" by Dennis McDugual is the story of his life and is an interesting read if you are interested in the history of LA. No family influenced the growth of LA more than the Chandler family.
I actually have the book (bought it at a book sale for a couple of bucks) but haven't read it yet. I agree, Chandler had a lot of influence since the beginning of the last century. In 1999, the Santa Monica Mirror did a multi-part series on the Chandler family, written by "investigative historian" Mark Dowie. It is pretty interesting. Here's the links that I had bookmarked.
The Chandlers: L.A.'s First FamilyPart II: Buff Chandler’s Ascent
Sorry, Dowie, It's Chandlertown (Interview with author of series)
Postscript: The Chandlers (by the SM Mirror editor)
Thanks for the info. I will save and read at a later date.
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