A prince who earned his crown

Catching a glimpse of Otis Chandler striding through The Times' newsroom was like sighting a griffin: a creature of mythology, half-lion and half-eagle. In his person, Otis stitched together two ideas as dissonant as Valvoline and Sparkletts: a believer in that most-democratic of instruments, a free and fair press -- the only business mentioned in the Constitution -- and an heir to that most regressive of institutions, an absolute monarchy.

Chandler, who died early Monday, was the fourth generation of a dynasty of business monarchs, and every story told of kings and queens could be told of him: the gifted and golden prince, the formidable queen mother urging him on, the contentious and jealous family nipping at his flank.

His kingdom was Southern California. As owners and operators of the Los Angeles Times, his family had virtually ruled it for nearly 100 years, enriching itself as the region prospered under its marching orders.

Otis was a child of his name and his city, but he was also a child of the age. He became publisher in 1960, the year that John F. Kennedy was elected president. The nation was looking to new frontiers, and so was Otis. Ask not what your newspaper can do for you; ask what you can do for your newspaper.

The paper he inherited was so lousy that humorists made a joke of it. The city he was born in was sneered at like some beautiful but stupid starlet, wanting in substance, culture, taste and history.

To his forebears, the newspaper was just a means to an end -- a club, a prod, a reward. Otis made the newspaper its own purpose, and its own mission. And he elevated the city's reputation as he elevated the paper's.

His confidence was monarchical. He asked his editor, Nick Williams, "What does it take to make this the best paper in the world?" and he set about with a checklist to make it happen.

My colleague Eric Malnic, who just retired after more than 40 years here, said Otis was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with the right tools. He professionalized the newspaper, hiring college-educated writers who could cover beats -- science, politics, the bold social and racial changes of the 1960s -- with sophistication and judgment, not with the gee-whiz hokum or the vituperative boosterism of the old L.A. Times. Mass and class, he said, was the paper's mission.