Otis Chandler
| Otis Chandler | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 23, 1927 Los Angeles, California |
| Died | February 27, 2006 (aged 78) Ojai, California |
| Cause of death | Lewy body disease |
| Alma mater | BA, Stanford University |
| Occupation | Publisher |
| Spouse(s) | Marilyn "Missy" Chandler, nee Brant (June 1951–July 1981) Bettina Chandler, nee Whitaker (August 1981–February 2006, his death) |
| Children |
Mike Chandler Harry Brant Chandler Carolyn F. Chandler Cathleen Chandler Eckhardt Norman B. Chandler |
| Parent(s) |
Dorothy Buffum Chandler Norman Chandler |
| Relatives |
Charles Abel Buffum (grandfather) Fern Smith Buffum (grandmother) Edwin Buffum (great-uncle) Harrison Gray Otis (great-grandfather) Camilla Chandler (sister) Harry A. Buffum (uncle) Thurlyne Buffum (aunt) Stephen Ortis (great-great grandfather) Sara Ortis (great-great grandmother) Eliza Ann Otis (great-grandmother) Marian Otis Chandler (grandmother) |
Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 – February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position.
Chandler made improvement of the paper's quality a top priority, succeeding in raising the product's reputation, as well as its profit margins. "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," journalist David Halberstam wrote in his history of the company.
Chandler's family owned a stake in the newspaper since his great-grandfather Harrison Gray Otis joined the company in 1882, the year after the Los Angeles Daily Times began publication. He was the son of Norman Chandler, his predecessor as publisher, and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, a patron of the arts and a Regent of the University of California. His grandfather, Charles Abel Buffum was a businessman that founded Buffum's a department store chain, with his brother, Edwin A. Buffum, and a politician, who served as Mayor of Long Beach, California.
Chandler was raised to share his family's distaste for labor unions, a tradition that favored the family's financial interests. As a child, each year his parents held a memorial for the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing, linked to political agitators, that killed 20 Times workers. "I was raised to hate the unions," Chandler said.
"Oats" was Chandler's nickname within the family.
Times editorial page editor Anthony Day observed that Chandler "had been raised to be a prince".
Throughout his life, Chandler complained that his family was not properly respected by East Coast elites. About attending an exclusive East Coast boarding school, he said, "Nobody there had ever heard of the Chandlers. I was strictly a tall, skinny blond kid from California". Later in life, Chandler said his motivation to invest in The Times' quality could be attributed, at least in part, to his desire to combat the East Coast opinion that, "The Times was regarded as a bad newspaper from a hick town". Chandler attributed his pursuit of solo athletics like shotputting and weightlifting to the same sources, saying, "No one could say that the team carried me or that the coach put me in because my name was Chandler".
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Wikipedia