L A Times
It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States. In addition to its print product, the Times also publishes a 24-hour news Web site at latimes.com.
Founded in 1881, the Times has won 37 Pulitzer Prizes through 2004; this includes four in editorial cartooning, and one each in spot news reporting for the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The paper's printer, the Mirror Company, took over the newspaper and installed former Union Army lieutenant colonel Harrison Gray Otis as an editor.
In 1884, he bought out the newspaper and printing company to form the Times-Mirror Company.
Rubble of the Times building after the 1910 bombing.
Historian Kevin Starr lists Otis (with Henry E. Huntington and Moses Sherman) as a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment." Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth.
Towards those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the watershed of the Owens Valley, an effort (highly) fictionalized in the Roman Polanski movie Chinatown which is also covered in California Water Wars.
The efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the October 1, 1910, bombing of its headquarters, killing 21 people. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty, although supporters then (and since) believed the two men were framed. The paper soon relocated to the Times Building, a Los Angeles landmark.
Chandler era
On Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law Harry Chandler took over the reins as publisher of the Times.
Harry Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth of post-war Los Angeles. Norman's wife, heiress and fellow Stanford alumnus Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor.
Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios. The site also includes a memorial to the Times building bombing victims.
The paper was a founding co-owner of then-CBS turned independent television station KTTV; it became that station's sole owner in 1951 and remained so until it sold it to Metromedia in 1963.
Now that station is owned by Fox through Newscorp.
The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 to 1980. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times and Washington Post.
It has also been the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications or social science in the past four decades.
Modern era
LA Times building, May 2006, featuring green "125 Years" banners, at 1st and Spring, downtown Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times building, viewed from the corner of 1st and Spring streets
The Los Angeles Times paid circulation figures have decreased since the mid-1990s. It has recently been unable to pass the one million mark, a milestone easily surpassed in earlier decades.
Some believe the circulation drop was a result of a liberal bias attributed to the paper, which alienated many readers; others attribute the drop to the increasing availability of alternate methods of obtaining news, such as the Internet, cable TV or radio. Others also believe that the drop was due to the circulation director (Bert Tiffany) retiring.
Still others believe the circulation drop was a side effect of a succession of short-lived editors who were appointed by publisher Mark Willes after Otis Chandler relinquished day-to-day control in 1995. Willes, the former president of General Mills, was criticized for his lack of understanding of the newspaper business, and was derisively referred to by reporters and editors as The Cereal Killer.
Other possible reasons for the circulation drop include an increase in the single copy price from 25 cents to 50 cents or the rise in readers preferring to read the online version instead of the hard copy. Editor Jim O'Shea, in an internal memo announcing a May 2007, mostly voluntary reduction in force, characterized the decrease in circulation as an "industry-wide problem" which the paper must counter by "growing rapidly on-line," "break news on the web and explain and analyz it in our newspaper." 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner Nancy Cleeland, who took O'Shea's buyout offer, did so because of "frustration with the paper's coverage of working people and organized labor" (the beat that earned her her Pulitzer). She speculated that the paper's revenue shortfall could be reversed by expanding coverage of economic justice topics which she believes are increasingly relevant to Southern California; she cited the paper's attempted hiring of a "celebrity justice reporter" as an example of the wrong approach.
In 2000, the Times-Mirror Company was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago, Illinois, ending one of the final examples of a family-controlled metropolitan daily newspaper in the U.S.
John Carroll, former editor of the Baltimore Sun, was brought in to restore the luster of the newspaper. During his reign at the Los Angeles Times he eliminated more than 200 jobs, but it was not enough for parent company Tribune.
Despite operating profits of 20 percent the Tribune executives were unsatisfied with returns and by 2005 John Carroll had left the Los Angeles Times.
Dean Baquet replaced John Carroll, who refused to impose the additional cutbacks mandated by Tribune. Baquet was the first African American to hold this type of editorial position at a top-tier daily.
During Baquet and Carroll's time at the paper it won 13 Pulitzers, more than any other paper but the New York Times. Subsequently, Baquet was himself ousted for not meeting the demands of the Tribune Group- as was publisher Jeffrey Johnson - and replaced by James O'Shea of the Chicago Tribune. In 2000, a major change more closely organized the news sections (related news was put closer together) and changed the "Local" section to the "California" section with more extensive coverage.
There are regular cross-promotions with co-owned KTLA to bring evening news viewers into the Times fold.
In early 2006, The Times closed its San Fernando Valley printing plant, leaving press operations at the Olympic Plant and Orange County. The Times's loss of circulation is the highest out of the top ten newspapers in the U.S. Despite this recent circulation decline, many in the media industry have lauded the newspaper's effort to decrease its reliance on 'other-paid' circulation in favor of building its 'individually-paid' circulation base - which showed a marginal increase in the most recent circulation audit.
This distinction reflects the difference between, for example, copies distributed to hotel guests free of charge (other-paid) versus subscriptions and single-copy sales (individually-paid).
In December 2006, a team of Times reporters delivered management with a critique of the paper's online news efforts known as the Spring Street Project. The report, which condemned the Times as a "web-stupid" organization," }} </ref> was followed by a shakeup in management of the paper's Web site, latimes.com, and a rebuke of print staff who have "treated change as a threat."
Under Sam Zell's ownership
On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its acceptance of Sam Zell's offer to buy the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and all other company assets. Zell announced plans to take the company private and sell off the Chicago Cubs baseball club.
He put up for sale the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Up until the time of shareholder approval, Los Angeles billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad had the right to submit a higher bid, in which case Zell would have received a $25 million buyout fee.
The paper reported on July 3, 2008 that it planned to cut 250 jobs by Labor day and reduce the number of published pages by 15%. That included about 17% of its news staff, as part of the newly private media company's mandate to slash costs.
Since Zell bought Tribune, the paper has been struggling to deal with a heavy load of debt. Times.
Editorial policy
For most of its first 80 years, the Times had been known as an unabashedly conservative paper, reflecting the stance of Harrison Gray Otis.
The Mirror absorbed The Los Angeles Daily News in 1954 and ceased publication in 1962, when the Herald-Express was merged with the morning Los Angeles Examiner.
In 1989, its last rival for the Los Angeles daily newspaper market, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, went out of business, making Los Angeles nominally a one-newspaper city. However, in the suburban neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley, The Times still competed with The Valley News and Greensheet, which later renamed itself The Daily News of Los Angeles to compete with the Times.
Times has an Orange County edition (with its own printing presses and editorial staff) that competes with the Santa Ana based The Orange County Register. La Opinión, a Spanish language daily newspaper previously owned by The Times for several years in the 1990s, also sells many papers.
Outside of the city of Los Angeles proper, The Times also competes against several smaller daily and weekly papers in nearby Southern California cities.
Examples include The Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Daily Breeze (South Bay), The Ventura County Star, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, The Pasadena Star-News and the Canyon news.
In the 1990s, the Times attempted to publish various editions catering to far flung areas. Of these, only the Inland Empire and Ventura County editions remains, although nearby cities such as Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Barstow and Needles still sell the Times in selected newsstands.
Some of these editions were folded in to Our Times, a group of community newspapers included in home delivery and newsstand editions of the regular Los Angeles Metro newspaper.
Times Community Newspapers are primarily independent local newspapers that were purchased by the Los Angeles Times during its expansion phase, but have a large enough readership and advertiser base to be continued. These include the News-Press in Glendale, the Leader in Burbank (and surrounding areas), the Sun in La Crescenta and surrounding regions, the Daily Pilot in Newport Beach and surrounding cities, and the Independent in Huntington Beach.
Features
Among its current staff are columnists Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison, popular music critics Robert Hillburn and Randy Lewis, film critic Kenneth Turan, entertainment industry columnist Patrick Goldstein and numerous award-winning reporters.
Sports columnists include Bill Plaschke, who is also a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, T.J.
Simers, Kurt Streeter and Helene Elliott, the first female sportswriter to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Most recently, Lopez wrote an acclaimed five-part series on the civic and humanitarian disgrace of Los Angeles' Skid Row.
Controversies
The credibility of the Times suffered greatly when it was revealed in 1999 that a revenue-sharing arrangement was in place between the Times and Staples Center in the preparation of a 168-page magazine about the opening of the sports arena.
The magazine's editors and writers were not informed of the agreement, which breached the "Chinese wall" that traditionally has separated advertising from journalistic functions at American newspapers. His role was controversial, as he forced writers to take a more decisive stance on issues.
Although it failed, readers could combine forces to produce their own editorial pieces. He resigned later that year.
On November 12, 2005, new Op-Ed Editor Andrés Martinez shook things up by announcing the firing of leftist op-ed columnist Robert Scheer and conservative editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, replacing the two with a more diversified lineup of regular columnists.
Garfield was dropped altogether shortly thereafter.
Following the GOP's defeat in the 06 mid-term Elections, an Opinion piece published on November 19, 2006 by Joshua Muravchik, a leading neoconservative and a resident scholar at the conservative view American Enterprise Institute, titled BOMB IRAN shocked some readers, with its hawkish overtures in support of more unilateral action by the United States, this time against Iran.
On March 22, 2007, editorial page editor Andrés Martinez resigned following an alleged scandal centering around his girlfriend's professional relationship with a Hollywood producer who had been tapped to guest edit a section in the newspaper. In an open letter penned upon leaving the paper, Martinez blasted the publication for allowing the Chinese Wall between the news and editorial departments to be weakened, accusing news staffers of lobbying the opinion desk.
Also in March 2007 the Times faced rumors that publisher David Hiller suggested and approved former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with whom Hiller has close personal and business contacts, for a guest editorial position at the newspaper. Rumsfeld was an influential Iraq war hawk in the George W. The newspaper ran the story days before the recall even though it had prepared the story weeks beforehand.
Columnist Jill Stewart pointed out that the Times did not do a story on allegations that former Governor Gray Davis had verbally and physically abused women in his office.
Their refusal to release this tape to the general public has caused the web site "Ace of Spades" to originally offer a $25,000 reward to any LA Times Staffer who can produce an authentic copy of the tape. This offer has since been verifiably increased with the addition of a $150,000 offering payable to the individual who releases the tape by Aston Grimaldi II, the CIO of Dune Capital Holdings.
In a statement issued October 28th, 2008, the "Times" states: "The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton.
"The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Book Prizes
L.A. Times building view
Further information: List of Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners
Ever since 1980, the Los Angeles Times has awarded a set of annual book prizes.
In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award is presented annually to a living author with a substantial connection to the American West whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition" .
The Book Prize program was founded by Art Seidenbaum, a Times book editor from 1978 to 1985; an award named after him was added a year after his death in 1990.