Enterprise in Los Angeles

At the first sign of trouble in the Watts area of Los Angeles last summer, the L.A. Times swung into action. It took some 50 reporters and photographers off other jobs and poured them into the riot-torn streets. To get as much of the inside story as possible, the paper turned a Negro advertising salesman into a reporter who provided a graphic eyewitness account. Times-men in other parts of the U.S. and abroad were alerted to file stories on the reaction to the turmoil. A Times reporter in Athens interviewed vacationing California Governor Pat Brown. Once Watts calmed down, Timesmen were sent back to search out the causes of the riots. Their combined labor produced a thoughtful seven-part series that was later published in booklet form: The View from Watts.

The Times's editorial enterprise was rewarded last week with a Pulitzer Prize* for local coverage. Like many another metropolitan daily facing expanding competition from TV, radio and magazines, the Times is working overtime to strengthen the local reporting, which is a newspaper's major asset. It is to the Times's credit that, Pulitzer or no, it is still not satisfied with its home-town coverage. The paper's own editorial brass feels that it has scored most of its successes so far on national and international coverage.

Stylish Analysis. With an editorial budget that has doubled to $8,000,000 over the past six years, the Washington bureau staff has been increased from two to twelve, the foreign bureaus from three to 15. Full-time reporters have been put to work in the arts, science and medicine. Today the Times carries more news and advertising than any other U.S. paper, and its 839,000 circulation is the nation's third largest--after the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune.

Much of the credit for the change can be chalked up to Publisher Otis Chandler, 38, a fun-loving surfer and weight lifter who took over from his father Norman in 1960 and surprised everybody with his energetic approach to his job. Under his urging, the paper has been noticeably brightened. Page 2 is devoted to capsule summaries of the day's news, with the less important stories getting no further space in the paper--a practice that opens up many more columns for stylishly written news analysis and interpretation. Recently, in an effort to make the paper more readable, pages that contain no advertising have been switched from eight-to six-column makeup.

A Republican paper, the Times does not automatically endorse Republican candidates, and maintains a moderate stance. It has supported the nuclear test ban treaty, the sale of surplus grain to Russia, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was one of the first papers to attack the John Birch Society in an editorial written by Otis.

Search for Talent. In many ways, the home-town coverage for which it won its prize presents the biggest problems for the Times. With 4,800 sq. mi. of overlapping, interlocking governments, Los Angeles is a city editor's nightmare. To cover the sprawl, Metropolitan Editor Bill Thomas now assigns reporters to metropolitan-wide specialties--rapid transit, smog, property taxes. In its ceaseless search for talent, the Times has the hardest time locating competent copy editors, who are now in short supply across the nation. To fill the gap, the paper is about to embark on a program of recruiting copy editors straight from college and training them on the job.

The Times has no doubt that it will soon resolve the problem of local coverage. "Under Otis," says Editor Nick Williams, "cautiousness has turned to aggressiveness. He is always pressing for improvements before I expect him to do so." Not every editor talks that way about his publisher.

*Other Pulitzer awards--Public Service: the Boston Globe for its campaign to prevent the confirmation of Francis X. Morrissey as federal judge; National Reporting: Haynes Johnson of the Washington Evening Star; International Reporting: Peter Arnett of the Associated Press; Local Reporting, special: John A. Frasca of the Tampa Tribune; Editorial Writing: Robert Lasch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Cartoons: Don Wright of the Miami News; News Photography: Kyoichi Sawada of UPI; History: the late Perry Miller; Biography: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter; Poetry: Richard Eberhart; Nonfiction: Edwin Way Teale.

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