Los Angeles Times

For more than a century, the Chandler family and the Los Angeles Times shaped Southern California's growth through the newspaper's influence and business power, promoting projects and causes that included water for Los Angeles, a port, a music center, aerospace, movies, major league baseball, and the rise of future U.S. presidents. The family's dynasty began here in 1882, when Harrison Gray Otis went to work as an editor at the Los Angeles Valley Daily Times for $15 a week, soon bought a share for $6,000, and within three years owned the paper outright. A Civil War veteran later given the rank of general for service in the Spanish-American War, Otis ran the paper with combative zeal, calling an earlier building the Fortress and his staff the Phalanx. By 1900, Otis and other wealthy Angelenos had organized a secret plan to bring water 250 miles south from the Owens Valley and had bought cheap San Fernando Valley land to profit when the water arrived in 1913. Otis fought organized labor bitterly, and on October 1, 1910, a massive explosion destroyed the Los Angeles Times building and killed 20 men; the anti-union paper blamed labor leaders, and the later confession of union leaders Jim and John McNamara devastated the labor movement's open-shop campaign. The building was rebuilt on the same site, and when the present building at First and Spring streets was constructed in 1934 under Otis' son-in-law and successor Harry Chandler, he ordered extra cement added so a bomb could never again bring it down. Harry Chandler, a shrewd businessman who worked more quietly than Otis, helped extend the paper's reach and influence, while the newspaper and its owners backed aviation, reluctantly welcomed the movie industry, and promoted the deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. In 1935, Harry Chandler accepted an offer to sell the paper, but his wife Marian, Otis' daughter, objected and the family retained it. Under Harry's son Norman Chandler, who took over in 1944, the newspaper prospered greatly, and under Norman's son Otis Chandler, who became publisher in 1960, it changed from a conservative regional paper into a nonpartisan journal of record with national and international stature. More than a century of Chandler ownership ended near the new millennium, when the newspaper and its sister publications were acquired by the Chicago-based Tribune Corporation.

Los Angeles, California · United States