Otis Chandler
28 February 2006 |permalink | email article
The Los Angeles Times produced an epic tribute Tuesday to honor Otis Chandler, its legendary publisher who inherited a stodgy family jewel in 1960 and, for the next 20 years, transformed a parochial, right of center, broadsheet into a major American paper.
If a Pulitzer Prize is awarded for obits, the draft filed by the late David Shaw before his death Aug. 1, and Mitchell Landsberg, who re-wrote the text and did additional reporting, qualifies ñ and not just because the farewell runs 13,500 words.
It’s a candid, revealing piece - warts and all ñ about the tumultuous history under three Chandler publishers, starting with Harry Chandler, Otisí grandfather; Norman Chandler, his father - and very influential mother, Dorothy ìBuffî Chandler. How Otis followed an unexpected path as a maverick to remake the paper over 20 years with top talent, often to the displeasure of many family members, is riveting.
That the family, majority Times Mirror stockholders, sold out to the Tribune Co. in 2000, and Otisí disenchantment with its management leading to his praise for the merger, is covered in unvarnished detail.
For a city with so little understood history, the obit is mportant to educate a new generation of readers, and for newly arrived editors and reporters to grasp in the wake of Tribune-mandated buyouts which cost the paper valuable institutional memory.
It was refreshing for many of us who remember the Otis era to see the Timesí former Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Paul Conradís soaring eagle tribute on the op-ed page. Conrad, love him or loathe him, made these pages sizzle. It’s no longer true.
2744
Twitter Bytes
Monthly archives
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
Links
- Calbuzz
- Ron Kaye L.A.
- Cincinnati Beacon
- Talking Points Memo
- Salon
- Andrew Sullivan
- Marc Cooper
- L.A. Observed
- The Angry Anthropologist
- Slate
