Changing Times

A city in which explosive change is routine, Los Angeles has always counted on one unchanging and unchangeable institution: the wealthy, well-edited Los Angeles Times (circ. 526,800). Last week came proof that even the Times can change. Handsome, grey-haired Norman Chandler, 60, publisher for the last 19 years, announced that he is relinquishing that post to his only son Otis, 32.

To Times readers, the paper may appear, at least for a while, like the same old Times. As such, it is a capably staffed newspaper with the biggest bulk west of Chicago. Where other newspapers send one reporter after a local story, the Times may send a squad, then run everything they write. This produces coverage so exhaustive that the editor of a rival daily once remarked that the Times was "put together with a shovel." Enduringly conservative in its policies, stubbornly sedate in a city that invented Hollywood, the Times has long gazed contentedly over its sprawling domain. The notion of its getting nervous about any sort of competition seemed highly improbable.

But a couple of well-heeled outlanders have recently edged into the territory the Times considers its own. In February, the Cowles organization moved west with the purchase by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune of the suburban San Fernando Valley Times (circ. 50,190). In March, Brush-Moore Newspapers Inc., a solidly profitable chain with nine other dailies in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, bought the fast-growing San Gabriel Valley Tribune (circ. 44,130).

Slight as such incursions may have seemed, they were hardly calculated to please Norman Chandler. A man with a strong sense of empire and dynasty,* his action in stepping aside for his son Otis was a characteristic way of readying the Times for whatever the future may hold (he will stay on as president of the parent Los Angeles Times-Mirror Co., which also controls the ailing afternoon Mirror-News).

The Times's new publisher is a massive man (6 ft. 2 1/2 in., 230 Ibs.) who still holds the shot-put record at Stanford University and keeps 1,000 Ibs. of weight-lifting equipment in an air-conditioned workout room on the top floor of the Times Building. Born to succeed his father. Otis, the father of four children, broke in on the Times as an apprentice pressman, worked his way through every department of the newspaper, won the respect of editorial and business staffers. Hard-jawed, with cold blue eyes, Otis Chandler has few illusions about anything--including himself. "When it comes to the paper's editorial policy," he said last week, "I am going to sit and do a lot of listening for a long, long time. I don't want to open my mouth in front of the wise men until I know what I'm opening it for."

Realistic as he is, Otis Chandler has bright visions for Los Angeles--and the Times. "In the not too distant future," he said, "the city will stretch from Santa Barbara to San Diego. By the time that supercity is in existence, there will, I suspect, be only one metropolitan morning paper and one metropolitan evening paper to serve it. There will, of course, be area publications, serving everything from new subdivisions to cities like Santa Barbara or San Diego. But there is going to be only one dominant, central newspaper--and that's going to be the Los Angeles Times."

* "A newspaper," said Chandler in making his announcement last week, "must be the image of a man, whether you agree with him or not." Whereupon he invoked the three images he rated most highly: The New York Times's Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the late William Randolph Hearst, the Chicago Tribune's late Colonel Robert R. McCormick.

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