Los Angeles Times Totally Explained

Everything about Los Angeles Times totally explained

The Los Angeles Times (also known as the LA Times) is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the Western United States. 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. In 2004, the paper won five prizes, which is the third-most by any paper in one year (behind The New York Times in 2002 (7) and The Washington Post in 2008 (6)).

History

The paper was first published as the Los Angeles Daily Times on December 4, 1881, but soon went bankrupt. The paper's printer, the Mirror Company, took over the newspaper and installed former Union Army lieutenant colonel Harrison Gray Otis as an editor. Otis made the paper a financial success. In 1884, he bought out the newspaper and printing company to form the Times-Mirror Company. 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. Two union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged. 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 alum 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. Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times and Washington Post. Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with the Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations.
   During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined.
   A Pulitzer Prize in 1990 went to the Times' Jim Murray, considered by many to be one of the greatest sportswriters of the century.
   The paper's early history and subsequent transformation was chronicled in an unauthorized history Thinking Big (1977, ISBN 0399117660), and was one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in The Powers That Be (1979, ISBN 0394503813; 2000 reprint ISBN 0252069412). 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

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. 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[ing] news on the web and explain[ing] and analyz[ing] 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 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. O'Shea himself left in January, 2008 after a budget dispute with publisher David Hiller.
   The paper's content and design style has been overhauled several times in recent years in attempts to help increase circulation. 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. Another major change in 2005 saw the Sunday "Opinion" section retitled the Sunday "Current" section, with a radical change in its presentation and columnists featured. 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. Also in 2006, the Times announced its circulation at 851,532, down 5.4% from 2005. 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," 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 their acceptance of Sam Zell's offer to buy the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and other media assets. Zell reportedly plans to take the company private and sell off the Chicago Cubs after the 2007 season. He will also sell 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 may submit a higher bid in which case Zell would receive a $25 million buyout fee.
   According to the Jewish daily The Forward, the pending purchase of the Times had stirred debate as to what influence would Samuel Zell, who has a reputation for being a "committed Zionist", effect on the paper's coverage of Israel. One former Los Angeles Times political reporter, Ken Reich, assumes the paper's policies will be shaped to "some degree." Reich elaborates: � "If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests. [...] It wouldn't take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East. I tend to expect this to happen." Michael Kinsley was hired as the Opinion and Editorial (Op-Ed) Editor in April 2004 to help improve the quality of the opinion pieces. His role was controversial, as he forced writers to take a more decisive stance on issues. In 2005, he created a Wikitorial, the first Wiki by a major news organization. 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. The change wasn't well-received by liberal readers, many of whom accused the newspaper of trying to silence liberal voices and remove controversial writers.
   The Times has also come under controversy for its decision to drop the weekday edition of the Garfield comic strip in 2005, in favor of a hipper comic strip Brevity, while retaining the Sunday edition. 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 right-wing American Enterprise Institute, titled BOMB IRAN shocked readers, including over a million Iranian Americans of California, 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, Grazer 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. Bush administration. Rumsfeld also has strong ties to the Times' parent company, the Tribune Company, where he was a member of the board of directors.
   Times editor John Carroll stated that the Times lost over 10,000 subscribers due to the negative publicity surrounding this article.

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

Since 1980, the Los Angeles Times has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes "currently have nine single-title categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller (category added in 2000), poetry, science and technology (category added in 1989), and young adult fiction (category added in 1998). 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 Los Angeles Times book editor from 1978 to 1985; an award named after him was added a year after his death in 1990. The Robert Kirsch Award is named after the longtime Times book critic who died in 1980. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though English doesn't have to be the original language of the work. The author of each winning book and the Kirsch Award recipient receives a citation and $1,000.

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