Otis Chandler

In 1995, Jeffrey Chandler decided to break with tradition and expose a family schism. A member of the large, extended and very private family that owned the Los Angeles Times, he had come to believe that the newspaper had become far too liberal under the control of his cousin, Otis Chandler. It was time for The Times to return to its conservative roots, Chandler and his sister, Corinne Werdel, told Forbes magazine. "We have the inmates running the asylum," Werdel said.

"Book reviews in newspapers, well, those are gone," the young Web entrepreneur told me in the most matter-of-fact way. "Independent bookstores are almost gone. Chains will probably be gone soon. It's all happening online now. " That might have been ho-hum stuff coming from just any techie. But the pronouncements were being made by a descendent of a print-and-ink empire. Otis Chandler made no apologies. His great-great-great-grandfather may have founded the Los Angeles Times.

Thank you for the article on the life of former Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler (obituary, Feb. 28), a fascinating glimpse into the world of this prominent and accomplished man. The accounting of Chandler's life in the historical context of Los Angeles in those days was outstanding; the reader got a real sense of the enormous significance of the transformation of The Times under his leadership and its effect on the city as a whole....

Once upon a time in the Land of Right Around Here, a family named Chandler owned a newspaper called the Los Angeles Times. They and the kingdom they ruled for nearly 100 years are the twin subjects of "Inventing LA: The Chandlers & Their Times," a feature-length documentary airing tonight on PBS. Anyone interested in Los Angeles is by definition interested in the Chandlers, since the way the city looks and works, and doesn't work, was formed...

Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980, was honored Wednesday by USC for transforming The Times into one of the nation's finest newspapers. Chandler, 72, received the Annenberg School for Communication's first Lifetime Achievement Award for bringing "world-class status to Los Angeles as well as The Times."

CONTENTS: PREFACE: A Business Deal Done--A Controversy Born CHAPTER 1: The Deal CHAPTER 2: The Debate CHAPTER 3: The Meeting CHAPTER 4: The Decision CHAPTER 5: The Hard Sell CHAPTER 6: The Prelude CHAPTER 7: The Visitor CHAPTER 8: The Press CHAPTER 9: The Wall CHAPTER 10: Otis CHAPTER 11: The Aftermath Journalism Is A Very Different Business--Here's Why [see sidebar] Another Staples-Like Proposal Was Made to Times [see sidebar] * PREFACE / A Business Deal Done -- A Controversy Born The newsroom

If anyone had walked into the memorial service for Otis Chandler on Monday with the idea that the former Times publisher was somehow one-dimensional, Big Willie Robinson was there to set them straight. A 6-foot, 6-inch, 305-pound drag racer in camouflage clothing and a biker-style leather vest, Robinson leaped to his feet midway through the service at All Saints Church in Pasadena, strode up the center aisle and announced, quite unscripted: "Excuse me, everybody.

The family of Otis Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times and current chairman of the executive committee of Times Mirror Co., has pledged $250,000 to Casa Pacifica, a shelter under construction in Camarillo for abused and neglected children. The gift is from Chandler, his wife, Bettina, and his mother, Mrs. Norman Chandler. When the shelter opens during the summer of 1993, the main reception area will be named for the Chandler family, according to Casa Pacifica officials.

"Book reviews in newspapers, well, those are gone," the young Web entrepreneur told me in the most matter-of-fact way. "Independent bookstores are almost gone. Chains will probably be gone soon. It's all happening online now. " That might have been ho-hum stuff coming from just any techie. But the pronouncements were being made by a descendent of a print-and-ink empire. Otis Chandler made no apologies. His great-great-great-grandfather may have founded the Los Angeles Times.

At least eight months before the Watergate scandal began to unfold 25 years ago, President Richard Nixon attempted to put the Internal Revenue Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service on the trail of the Los Angeles Times and its publisher, Otis Chandler, according to recently released White House tapes of Nixon's conversations. "I want this whole goddamn bunch gone after," a furious Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. "I also want Otis Chandler's income tax."

When I was a young pup at the Los Angeles Times, every once in a while a buzz would go around the newsroom and everyone would run to a corner window overlooking 2nd Street to catch a glimpse of Otis Chandler emerging from whatever absurdly cool car he was driving back then. I wasn't around for the glory days when Otis was the paper's groundbreaking publisher.

As former editors of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (1975 through 2005), we are dismayed and troubled at the decision by Sam Zell and his managers to cease publishing the paper's Sunday Book Review. This step signals the end of an era begun 33 years ago when Otis Chandler, then the paper's publisher, announced the debut of the weekly section. Since then, the growth of the Los Angeles metropolitan region and the avidity of its numerous readers and writers has been palpable. For example, every year since its founding in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books has attracted upward of 140,000 people to the UCLA campus from all walks of life throughout Southern California.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Los Angeles Times will endorse two candidates -- a Democrat and a Republican -- in the Feb. 5 California presidential primary. A few months later, the paper will endorse a candidate for president. These will be the first such endorsements the paper has made in 35 years.

After more than 120 years, the Chandlers are getting out of the newspaper business. The much-celebrated and maligned family that once dominated the civic, cultural and political life of Southern California through its control of the Los Angeles Times agreed Monday to sell its entire stake in Tribune Co., the newspaper's parent.

I was hired at the Los Angeles Times as an apprentice pressman in the 1970s. The work I was doing when I started was dirty. Sometimes when I got home I needed my wife to scrub my back before I could go to bed because I would be covered in black ink. I would shower at work but I couldn't reach all the bad spots. I wasn't a very good reader when I started working for the paper. I would read the comics and Sports and maybe look at the classifieds and the rest of the paper. I began to substitute the front page for the comics and the editorial page for Sports, and my reading and thought process began to improve.

Bemoaning his extended family's apparent unwillingness to "rescue" the Los Angeles Times from its corporate owner, the great-great-grandson of the newspaper's founder is floating a proposal to put the paper in the hands of community owners. Harry B. Chandler's informal plan also calls for the paper to refocus on "must-read" local coverage and to consider offering "a la carte" service in which readers might get some features -- such as stock tables or comics -- only on demand.

Breaking the self-imposed silence he has maintained since retiring last year from Times Mirror Co.'s board of directors, Otis Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, criticized the paper's senior managers for "ill-advised" policies, which he believes have undermined its quality and credibility. Chandler's five-page-long reproof was conveyed late Wednesday afternoon by telephone to Bill Boyarsky, The Times' city editor.

About 45 years ago, Dorothy Buffum Chandler told her son Otis that she was lobbying the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to provide not just the Bunker Hill plot on which she wanted to build the city's new Music Center but also for a section of land south of the site. We should keep that for the Music Center too, she said, because we might need it some day; until then, we can use it for parking. Mother, Otis replied, can't you just for once be happy with what you've got?

How much was Otis Chandler's storied collection of vintage automobiles and motorcycles worth? More than $36 million, as it turns out. At least, that's what bidders hailing from as far away as Europe and Asia collectively agreed to pay Saturday for the late Los Angeles Times publisher's collection at an Oxnard auction. "This is one of those great moments" for car collecting enthusiasts, said Larry Crane, the Thousand Oaks-based editor of Auto Aficionado magazine.

A fire Monday heavily damaged a 6,000-square-foot mansion that once was the home of the late Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler. The fire, reported shortly before 6 p.m., was still active more than four hours later. No one was in the home, and there were no injuries. Jim Anderson, San Marino fire marshal, said the home may be a total loss. He said arson investigators were called to the scene in the 1000 block of Oak Grove Place, but he said he doubted that foul play was involved.