Danielle Christian

November 13th, 2014

MC 2001 Project

Los Angeles Times History and Analysis

History

The Otis Era

The Los Angeles Times, the fourth most universally

distributed newspaper in the United States, printed its first

edition on December 4th, 1881. The newspapers two editors at

the time, Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner, had no idea

that one-day their newspaper would have over 650,000 copies

circulated daily.

Even in its early days, The Lost Angeles Times struggled

to get a solid start. After contracting the Mirror Printing Plant to print the first edition,

the two young editors failed to pay the bill. The paper was then given to the Mirror

Company. A man named S.J Mathes ran the paper alone for about a year until The Times

first official editor, Harrison Gray Otis, took the reigns.

Otis was previously a government official, editor, and correspondent stationed in

Washington D.C. He then moved to Santa Barbra and bought the Santa Barbara Press,

which Otis wrote for until he relocated to Los Angeles. After agreeing with Mathes and

his partners at the Mirror Company, Otis took over the editorial responsibilities at The

Times and began turning the newspaper into a financial success.

During the early years of The Times, political parties separated newspapers. Otis

had been a Kentucky delegate to the Republican National Convention that nominated

Harrison Grey Otis

President Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860. This meant that the Los Angeles

Times was directed towards a conservative audience (which is the opposite of their

audience today).

Otis’ editorial style was knows

a ‘civic boosterism’, which focused

on promoting the city of Los

Angeles. And because the Times

was becoming a recognized

newspaper, it had an impact in

civic decisions. One major stance

the paper took was supporting the

city as they tried to claim the water

of Owens Valley. The California Water Wars had been stirring up trouble for the

residents of Los Angeles, and it was a big deal that a prominent newspaper chose a side.

The Los Angeles Times Bombing

Along with being a staunch conservative, Harrison Gray Otis was also anti-union.

The Iron Workers, a large union that was one of the stronger ones in the city of Los

Angeles, had been key for the unions of San Francisco because of its size. But unlike San

Francisco, Los Angles was not unionized. Otis had been fighting unions in his city since

1896, when he acquired the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association (M&M).

Using his newspaper and the M&M, he fought the few unions left in Los Angeles.

Without unions to set wage standards for the city, the unionized San Francisco’s wage

standards were undermined. Unions in San Francisco feared that employers would start

Owens Valley, where the California Water Wars took place

pressing for wage cuts, so they decided the only solution was to re-unionize Los

Angeles.

Things got drastic though when a bomb was set off in the alley outside the Los

Angeles Times building on October 1st, 1910 at 1:07am. Because of poor planning, the

perpetrators did not take into account the natural gas main lines under the building.

The bomb was also supposed to go off at 4:00 am when the building would be empty,

but the 16 sticks of dynamite had a clock timer that was faulty. Regardless of the time,

the bombers also forgot the employees would be working overnight to produce an extra

edition reporting the results of the Vanderbilt Cup auto race. The bomb killed 21 people

and injured 100 more. The criminals had also placed bombs at the homes of Otis

himself, F.J. Seehandelaar (secretary of the M&M), the Hotel Alexandria, and the Los

Angeles County Hall of Records. All of these locations remained safe since the bombs

never went off.

The Times and law

enforcement stressed the

importance of capturing the

perpetrators, but no arrests

were made. There was even a

$75,000 reward (which

would be about 1.8 million

dollars today) for the capture

of the bombers. After

extensive detective work, J.B. and

J.J. McNamara were arrested and tried for the murder and bombing of the Los Angeles

Times building a year later.

Rubble of the Los Angeles Times building after the bombing

Otis used this tragedy to his advantage, and

slammed unions in the newspaper. He called them

things like, “anarchic scum,” “cowardly murderers,”

“leeches upon honest labor,” and “midnight

assassins.” Historian Kevin Starr commented on

Otis’ scheming nature, saying he was “a

businessman capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion

for his own enrichment.” Because of the way he publicized the bombing in the Los

Angeles Times, the re-unionization movement was brought to a quick halt. After the

new building was created, he constructed a bronze eagle to stand on top of the new

headquarters, with a creed saying “Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True.”

The Chandler Era

After Otis passed away 1917, Harry Chandler took over as publisher. For three

straight years under his leadership in the 1920’s the Times was the leading newspaper

in advertising space and amount of classified ads. Harry Chandler had a sun, Norman,

who dropped out of Stanford and worked under his father as a secretary. He was then

general manager in 1936, president in 1941, and after his father’s death in 1944 he

became editor. Under his leadership, the newspaper not only got even more regional

prominence, but also was becoming a national presence. In 1961, the Sunday paper

reached a circulation of over one million. Norman Chandler retired and passed the

newspaper down to Otis Chandler, who became the fourth and final publisher from the

Chandler family.

Otis held his position from 1960 to 1980, and made improving the newspaper his

top priority. Because Los Angeles was so far west, other geographically centered papers

The bombers, J.J. and J.B. McNamara

like the Washington Post and The New York Times were outshining The Los Angeles

Times. His first steps to improve the

paper was increasing the budget and

expanding the staff. With more staff,

the newspaper could branch out to

national news and not just news in

California. He also shifted the Times to

more non-partisan reporting.

Before Otis, the newspaper had a

total of two outside offices. He quickly expanded that to 34 offices around the country.

Otis also joined the Times with the Washington post to form the Los Angeles Times-

Washington Post News Service, which would use both papers article for other news

organizations. During the 1960’s, the Times won four Pulitzer prizes for their reporting.

The Modern Era

After the Chandler Era, the newspaper

struggled with many staff and leadership changes.

The death of Otis Chandler left a man named Tom

Johnson in charge. Johnson was publisher for about 9

years, keeping the newspaper afloat. He then moved

onto TV broadcasting, and the newspaper had about

five publishers in a ten-year window.

It wasn’t until 2000 that the Times-Mirror

Company was merged with Tribune Company of

Chicago, which ended one of the last family-

Norman Chandler (left) and Otis Chandler (right)

The Tribune Tower in Chicago, Illinois

controlled newspapers in the United States. This merger created the potential for a

major-market multimedia leader with outlets now in broadcasting, publishing, and

interactive. The media company can now reach 80 percent of U.S. households.

The former editor of the

Baltimore Sun, John Carroll, was

brought in to bring the

newspaper back to its former

glory. During Carroll’s term as

publisher, the newspaper earned

13 Pulitzer Prizes. But Carroll clashed with Tribune executives, and 200 newsroom jobs

were eliminated along with the stock price of the Tribune Company declining from $50

to $36. After leaving the newspaper in 2005, Carroll left Dean Banqet in charge. Banqet

was the first African American to serve as executive editor in the papers newsroom. But

he was soon removed for not meeting the demands of the Tribune Group, along with the

editors to follow (Jeffery Johnson, James O’Shea and David Hiller).

In 2007, Sam Zell, a real estate

entrepreneur, announced he wanted to buy the

Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The

sale backfired, and the Tribune Company filed

for bankruptcy in 2008. Much of the blame is to

go to Zell, but it also had to do with lack of

advertisers and a debt loan of $12.9 billion.

The current publisher of the Times is

Eddy Hartenstein, who was appointed in 2008 after the resignation of David Hiller.

Along with being the publisher, Hartenstein is also the Chairman of Tribune Publishing.

John Carroll (left) and Dean Banqet (right)

Sam Zell, “LA Times Human Wrecking Ball”, according to an op-ed piece written by The Washington Post

In both roles, he oversees all aspects of the print and digital operations of one of the

largest daily newspaper in the US.

Coping with Challenges

Circulation and Cost Reduction

In 2000, the newspaper tried to re-organize the newspaper to increase

circulation. The executives at the Tribune Company wanted to change the papers

content and design style. The “Local” section was changed to the “California” section

with more in depth coverage. In 2005, the newspaper also changed its Sunday “Opinion”

column to the Sunday “Current” section and the featured columnists and presentation

was drastically changed.

In July 2008, the Times

announced they were

planning on cutting 250

newsroom jobs and

reducing the number of

published pages by 15

percent to save money. The

cuts did not stop there. In January 2009, the newspaper announced even more changes,

with eliminating the “California” section all together, cutting seventy more jobs, 10

percent payroll cut, and increasing the newspaper cost 25 cents. This negatively

affected the paper, and the Times reported daily circulation in October 2010 to be

600,449 (which was down from it’s peak of 1.1 million a couple of years ago).

Abandoned Los Angeles Times Vending Machines in Covina, CA

Internet Presence

One of the major digital outlets the Times utilizes is its website. In 2006, Times editor

Jim O’Shea promised to revamp the site and gathered together a group of writers to

study the site for three months. He called this the “Spring Street Project”. The study

included data that showed sites like nytimes.com, Yahoo News and AOL News’ traffic

were all up more than 10%, while latimes.com was down nearly 9%. The committee

researching the website deemed latimes.com “practically invisible in Southern

California”. The report also included suggestions on how to remake the website into

something successful. After the severe criticism of the website, the Times launched a

whole new digital campaign and redesigned latimes.com. The sites traffic increased

15% from 2006 to 2007.

Unfortunately, the website revamping was the Times only recent digital success.

In 2007 the Times launched a site called “Metromix”, which targeted live entertainment

for young adults. They also created the

Times first stand alone print-weekly

which was a free tabloid print edition of

Metromix. The site and tabloid never

really took off, and the only good press

it got was the articles written about it in

Metromix tabloid with an article featuring Adele

the Times. In 2009, the Times ended Metromix and replaced it was a blog site and

tabloid called Brand X. Brand X targeted young adults who were social network readers.

Similar to Metromix, the site was shut down two short years later due to lack of interest.

Los Angeles Times Now

Out of the top 10 national newspapers, the Times is one that is struggling most.

Because of its strong early years and name recognition, it will be very hard to

completely destroy this newspaper. The Los Angeles Times still remains the largest

newspaper in Los Angeles (with the Los Angeles Daily News in the number two spot).

Today, the newspapers main focus is the individual subscriber versus other paid

circulation. The differences are the free copies given out in hotels versus the ones paid

for at the airport.

The Tribune Company as a

whole have not been doing well

themselves. Since July 2014, their

stock has been plummeting. Their

other major newspapers are not as

well known as the struggling Los Angeles Times, and include The Chicago Tribune,

Baltimore Sun, Sun-Sentinel, and the Daily Press.

It is hard to predict where the Times will be in 10 years. Maybe under new

management it could be brought back up to its original success, but that seems unlikely

since there are so many other successful newspapers with loyal readers. For the Los

Angeles Times to be back on top, they need to put their name back with the big media

Tribune Publishing Company Stock 2014

sources like the New York Times and Washington Post. The Times also needs to expand

their digital footprint and focus on the web as a platform for news.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Zell#Los_Angeles_Times

http://www.forbes.com/profile/sam-zell/

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-08-newspaper-circulation_x.htm

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/lats-scathing-internal-memo-read-it-

here_b111950

http://www.latimes.com/la-mediagroup-times-history-htmlstory.html

http://www.latimes.com/about/la-times-pulitzer-prizes-htmlstory.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_Publishing

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/04/otis-chandler-named-

publisher-of-the-times.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/business/media/21paper.html?_r=0

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tpub