The NY Times obituary on Otis Chandler talks about handler's legacy in transforming the LA Times from a partisan Republican rag into a partisan Democrat rag proper newspaper in the 1960's and 70's:
[T]he young publisher was taking over what was considered one of the worst major dailies in the country. S. J. Perelman, the New Yorker humorist, wrote that during a train trip to the West he asked the porter for a newspaper, "and unfortunately the poor man, hard of hearing, brought me The Los Angeles Times." The NBC News anchor Chet Huntley claimed to read the newspaper in order to "know that I can be reasonably accurate by going 180 degrees in the other direction."What they neglect to mention is that, by the post-Watergate era, the LA Times was as rabidly liberal as the "old" Times had been Republican. Probably not unexpected; the NY Times is, if anything, further to the left in its cant and neither paper seems to be able to return to the middle as their readers (and former readers) move to the right.In its political coverage, The Times made no pretense of fairness. In 1950, the political editor, Kyle Palmer, wrote that The Los Angeles Times intended to back Richard M. Nixon for the Senate while covering his liberal Democratic rival, Helen Gahagan Douglas, "from time to time, as space allows."
Soon after taking over as publisher, Otis Chandler vowed to raise the stature of the paper.
The daily's new course was evident in the 1960 presidential election. While the editorial page, as expected, backed Mr. Nixon, who was then vice president, news articles gave balanced coverage to his opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy. Two years later, the paper again demonstrated impartiality while covering Mr. Nixon's losing gubernatorial campaign against Pat Brown. It was a reporter from The Los Angeles Times who was the chief target of Mr. Nixon's sour post-election statement in which he declared: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." Under the next two decades of Mr. Chandler's stewardship, the Times Mirror Company and its flagship newspaper scored one success after another. Reversing decades of indifference to Los Angeles's African-American community, The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Watts riots in 1965.
In the 1964 presidential election, Mr. Chandler's parents insisted that their newspaper endorse Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, and not President Lyndon B. Johnson. But by 1970, Otis Chandler's more liberal views were reflected in editorials that urged an American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
The irony in reading in the NY Times about how open and rabid bias prevented the LA Times from becoming a great newspaper is overwhelming. Their readership declines, they are attacked on all sides (to the point of retreating behind a subscription wall), and their editorial slant left the mainstream of America long ago. Ah, but the glory days! Too bad they don't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.