When the news leaked out -- and made the front page of the New York Times -- it rocked the paper's newsroom. The division, an ethical given among journalists, exists so that reporters can write about people and companies without regard to the paper's financial interests. People who are born with Jupirer as the ruling planet are optimistic and have a big appetite for life. Chandler is spending several hours each Tuesday with Dennis McDougal, a former Los Angeles Times writer who is preparing a biography of him to be published next year. Otis Chandler's Geni Profile. In 1894, he wed the daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Harrison Gray Otis and proceeded to build a media empire. Today, the family's fortune is held in multiple trusts worth an estimated $4.2 billion. FamousBirthdays.com - use subject to the practices disclosed in our privacy policy. Watching the Chandlers And Their Times was jarring, comforting, educational, enlightening and a cautionary tale. ideamensch is an interview platform for entrepreneurs, makers, and doers. The Otis family is a Boston Brahmin family from Massachusetts best known for its involvement in early American politics. He was born on November 23, 1927 and his birthplace is California. I feel fortunate to be the steward of such a thing, and the people who use it are what truly inspires us. Otis's first word as publisher, uttered into a lightning storm of exploding flashbulbs: "Wow. First standards were set, then huge journalistic milestones were hit, and in the blink of an eye there was fiscal ruin, and a loss of ownership.What will we be left with? All Rights Reserved. Those jokes died out quickly once Chandler took over. There were Chandlers in my life, quite a few of them, apparently they were from different branches of the extraordinary family. Willes's deputy, publisher Kathryn Downing, was a lawyer "who had never seen a newspaper, practically, never delivered a newspaper, never worked at a paper," according to Chandler. How do circulation or advertising work?'" Philip Chandler and Harrison Chandler, as well as a sister, Mabel Otis Booth. He acquired other companies. He brought in outside consultants. Though they're sensitive, they also hesitate, which makes them lose on chances. By the time she married Norman Chandler, her father (Charlie Buffum) and her uncle (E.E. His parents,Norman Chandler and Dorothy Chandler, were both major financiers for Los Angeles cultural institutions. For almost 80 years, this would be the model for the paper. No longer would East Coast papers view it with contempt. A considerable strength of this exceptionally resonant docu, made in association with Los Angeles PBS outlet KCET, is its broad appeal to a variety of viewers, from history buffs and journalism mavens to watchers of all things Los Angeles, and perhaps most of all to longtime SoCal residents who can recall when the Times mattered. Once Dorothy became a Chandler, she didn't have much to do with the Buffums anymore. The city and the newspaper are so intertwined, Dennis McDougal points out in Privileged Son, his sprawling history of The Times, that its impossible to separate the two. We did wild things, although it's all kid stuff by today's standards. He grew up indulging his hobbies from weightlifting to big game hunting, and narrowly missing the 1952 Helsinki Olympics due to a wrist injury. Ruthless and strait-laced, he assured the Chandlers family wealth for generations to come. "Why continue to pile on?" Richard Nixon, one of the paper's favorite sons, learned to his immense chagrin that the Times intended to assign a reporter to John Kennedy's presidential campaign. Right-wing and boosterish, The Times remained what it had always been: the personal tool of the Chandlers. Trade Madness: Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders And Devils Spent February Making Notable Moves, Los Angeles Chargers Have Shown Keenan Allen The Money But They Wont Show Him The Door, The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 1 Recap And Review: The Apostate Sets The Stage For Whats To Come, Corner Threes Are Secret Sauce For Milwaukee Bucks Offensive Success, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Could Face Subpoena To Testify Before Congress, Bernie Sanders Says. 2023 Variety Media, LLC. She may have single-handedly raised the money for the Music Center and transformed Los Angeles cultural life, but she was a cold and petty tyrant, according to McDougal. Fiercely competitive, capable of engendering extraordinary loyalty, he also was self-absorbed, spoiled and a loner. Analysis of the popular Formula One Nexflix series "Drive to Survive" Season Five on an episode-by-episode basis. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. I think we have a pretty compelling product today, but in terms of offering a good answer to the question What should I read next? I think we are only at the tip of the iceberg. My favorite story about Otis combines the two. Otis Chandler built Goodreads in 2006 because he believed in social networking and wanted to see what his friends were reading. Biden said he believes his plan to forgive millions of borrowers student loans is on the right side of the law, a day after the courts conservative majority seemed highly skeptical of the Bidens Administrations argument for the debt relief program. [1] His son, Mike Chandler, was a race-car driver in the CART Championship Car series. Discover what happened on this day. . He incorporated the company as The Times Mirror Co. and, with the help of his future son-in-law, Harry Chandler, the papers circulation manager, crushed the competition. My uncle John tells me that Buffie Chandler did attend my grandmother's funeral in 1977 (though she may have left before the service ended). There is no more powerful thing in the world than an idea, and long-form books are the best conveyors of ideas. This uniquely American saga should stir the interest of specialized distribs and worldwide fests prior to Stateside PBS tube dates. Richard Nixon owed his career to favorable notices in the Times. He is Henry V, the good-time frat boy who achieves greatness when he ascends to the throne. Amos was born and died in 1785 and is buried in Norfolk. Michael is the son of Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler and Marilyn "Missy" Chandler. California Revealed He was 32. . He knew how reporters frantically typed their stories before deadline, how editors grunted over the copy, or shipped it to rewrite, or cracked a half-approving grin when they read lively prose. He never got the full credit he deserved for having taken care of the family. He was known for being a Family Member. "No Easterner can understand what it has meant in Californiato be a Chandler,"David Halberstam wrote in a famous run-on sentence from his media history, The Powers That Be, "for no single family dominates any major region of the country as the Chandlers have dominated California, it would take in the East a combination of the Rockefellers and the Sulzbergers to match their power and influence.". He grew up indulging his hobbies from weightlifting to big game hunting, and narrowly missing the 1952 Helsinki Olympics due to a wrist injury. Even to those who worked closely with him, he was a vexing character. The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. He started Goodreads as part of a personal goal to read more books, and has found a large core group of people that love reading, and have helped drive the direction of Goodreads. Chandler, bright and hard-working, was thinking of becoming a doctor. A year after graduating, he married Marilyn (Missy) Brant, '51, who shared his enthusiasm for sports and outdoor recreation. she asked. Chandler was the great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the blustery Civil War veteran who bought part-ownership of The Times in 1882, a year after it began publication, and was its. On their first formal visit to L.A., Tribune Co. vice president for publishing Jack Fuller and incoming publisher John Puerner took Chandler to dinner in Beverly Hills and solicited his opinions. Chandler works out at least every other day and competes in senior bicycle races. "This has been the greatest week of his life," says his friend John Thomas, referring to Chandler's meetings with the Tribune brass. In the early 1970s, Chandler became embroiled in an embarrassing stock scandal involving Jack Burke, '52, an old pal from Stanford. He would start in two days. It was a shock to them.". He knew how the circulation guys farmed out their routes to subcontractors and how the ad salespeople collected their commissions. When the water arrived in 1912, the land--once considered barren and useless--was worth millions. He was sure, though, that none of his five children was capable of succeeding him, so he named Tom Johnson to succeed him as publisher, and for the first time in nearly a century somebody other than a Chandler was running the Los Angeles Times. After divorcing his first wife (and then remarrying), did he also need to divorce himself from all the obligations his mother had instilled in him since he was a young boy? Otis has an outsize personality, and it surely grated on some uncles and cousins when they saw Otis's face on the cover of the Atlantic Monthly, Otis hobnobbing with Jimmy Carter the day after the signing of the Camp David accords, and Otis generally taking the credit for turning around their newspaper. He had five children: Norman, Harry Brant Chandler, Cathleen, Michael and Carolyn. I, like you, felt the odd combination of pride, curiosity and shame for peeking into the family photos of Los Angeles' most prominent family. . McDougal hints that Otis grew to resent his mother for using him in her wars with her in-laws, but he never examines how this might have shaped his behavior. He still surfs off the Ventura County coast; in fact, he took his long board on the plane with him for his 20th wedding anniversary in Tahiti in May. The concerts even became a family affair, as Wilde and her two kids were seated alongside Styles' mother, Anne Twist, at one of his performances in November 2021. His concerned colleagues retrieved the note from the trash can to find out what had happened. In 1960, his training complete, he became the fourth publisher in the history of the paper. But he came close. Share your family tree and photos with the people you know and love. Though the General loved attention, his son-in-law preferred anonymity. In my grandmother's old scrapbooks is a picture of Dorothy from 1918; on it, she wrote, "With so much love, to Loreen, from Dorothy". When I finally launched, a well-funded competitor launched the same week. Before Fame Still, he sometimes feared that his passion for surfing would be remembered more than his accomplishments at the Times. It's ironic that she didn't seem to have the same high expectations of her daughter; you would think that if anyone would have been aware of how much a woman could accomplish (even in that sexist era), it would have been Buffie. He spoke of doubling the Times's circulation to 2 million. He was captain of the legendary Stanford track team that included two-time Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias, '53. The decade was one of learning and exploration. Almost immediately afterward, 8-by-10 photos of Chandler began showing up in the newsroom, posted on pillars and desks and bulletin boards. Reporters, already disenchanted by the Willes regime, demanded an investigation and a public apology from Downing, which she gave. This put mother and daughter in conflict somewhat, since they were both seeking funds from the same pool of donors, and Buff was certain that her project had more merit than the art museum. Made with great respect for entrepreneurs in Missoula, Montana. Obviously, as a Buffum descendant, I'm not entirely objective in the matter. He led a privileged, isolated life for most of his childhood. She blackmailed people into making donations; she used the newspaper (especially the womens pages) to champion her personal causes, and she alternately smothered and intimidated her two children. The family patriarch, Gen. Harrison Otis, bought the newspaper in 1886. He also developed real estate and erected the famous Hollywood sign (which originally read "Hollywoodland") for one of his projects. As an Angelino I have an affinity to the Los Angeles Times. Lacking a male heir, Otis groomed Harry Chandler, who sometimes colluded with wealthy downtown business interests. Our mission is to get people excited about reading, and I think the way that generally happens is through social recommendations so we are working on ways to do book discovery that leverages the wisdom of the masses yet keeps the human element. Otis Chandlers mothers name is unknown at this time and his fathers name is under review. The bridegroom is a grandson of the late Otis Chandler, who was the fourth generation of the Chandler family to be publisher of The Los Angeles Times; he held the position from 1960 to. The museum is a private venture that buys and sells vintage cars and motorcycles and is open to the public just one day a month, by appointment only. [quote style=boxed]By testing them. "All he wants to do is help. Otis is also well known as, The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. After 20 years as publisher, in the rough-and-tumble of putting out a newspaper every day, was he just temperamentally ill-suited to be chairman of Times Mirror? Norman Chandler died in 1973. 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