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The Last Chandler: Otis - 1927-2006
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2533 Reads
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It was said of Otis Chandler, when people most needed his guidance again in the L.A.Times newsroom after he retired, "Otis has gone surfing, and he's not coming back."
More true now than ever: The man who wrenched the L.A. Times from a position of hidebound, right-wing regional parochialism up into the echelons of the nation's first-rate, wide-thinking global newspapers back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, has died at 78, the victim of a degenerative brain disease.
The exhaustive Times obit - doubtless in the can for years, but topped with latest details in the wee hours of this morning - sums up Chandler's superhero status pretty concisely with these two paragraphs:
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A fierce competitor in every endeavor he joined, whether it was track and field, race car driving or big game hunting, Chandler was willing to spend whatever it took, to hire whomever he needed, to advance his goal of turning The Times into a respected publication -- one that, he insisted, would eventually "knock the New York Times off its perch" as the most admired American newspaper.
By most assessments, including his own, he fell short of that last goal. But Chandler's accomplishments, along with a larger-than-life personality and a perpetual athlete's physique (he surfed, lifted weights and took grueling bicycle treks well into his 70s), were enough to make him one of the most storied and respected figures in American journalism, one who helped redefine the very notion of what a newspaper could be. His transformation of the newsroom, hiring and cultivation of deep diggers and strong voices and ultimately his vision of the paper as a global news organization make pale the publishers who followed him.
In the mid-90s, Mark Willes - the former General Mills president known as the "Cereal Killer" - presided over a string of blood-letting layoffs and idiotic editorial experiments (a "women's" section, a "Latino" section).
A few years later, replacement pub Kathryn Downing oversaw publication of the infamous Times mag issue on the opening of Staples Center that caused a scandal that badly damaged the paper's rep by all but obliterating the line between editorial and advertising.
And since the Chandler family sold out to Tribune Co. in 2000, the paper has been relegated almost to a back-water plaything for the bean counters in Chicago who seem often to care little about the paper's performance beyond its ability to amuse the stockholders.
No, Otis was just that big: his leadership made that paper into something great, to which all future incarnations would forever have to be compared. What remains is being borne forward to some extent by editors and reporters, many of whom remember still what Chandler codified as important, despite the chain's efforts to dissuade them.
We can watch that as it unfolds.
But I wonder when his ritual paddle-out will happen, and who'll attend.
I also wonder what will happen to Otis' other legacy - the huge collection of vintage motorcycles, muscle cars and taxidermied big game housed in Oxnard at the Otis Chandler Museum of Transportation and Wildlife.
(For more and far better reading on what Otis wrought, see David Halberstam's excellent The Powers That Be.)
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Monday, February 27, 2006 - 09:37 AM
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