Otis Chandler

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Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927–February 27, 2006) was best known as the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980. His family had owned the newspaper since Harrison Gray Otis founded the company in 1882. He was the son of Norman Chandler, his predecessor as publisher, and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, a patron of the arts and a Regent of the University of California.

After attending his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, Chandler became publisher of the Los Angeles Times in 1960. He quickly increased the budget of the paper allowing it to expand its coverage. This coincided with the shift of the paper from a conservative to a "progressive" publication.

David Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book The Powers That Be: "No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did." [1]

In 1980, he became chairman of Times Mirror and wound back his involvement in the running of the company. He handed control to people outside the family in the mid-1980s and became involved in other interests such as the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, which he founded in Oxnard, California in 1987 and was rarely open to the public.

In the late 1990s, he became critical of a perceived decline in the Times. He was not involved in negotiations by other members of the Chandler family to the Tribune Company but welcomed the outcome.

He died of Lewy body disease at age 78.