February 17, 2007

Who are the Chandlers, the family seemingly intent on breaking up one of the industry’s oldest and most venerated newspaper companies?For more than a century, the family played a central role in the Los Angeles Times and the building of modern L.A. The Chandlers’ patriarch, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, took over the Times in 1884 and built Times Mirror, a vastly successful family-run newspaper chain. Today, the Chandlers are once again agents of change in the newspaper business — this time as shareholders, rather than as editors and publishers.Seven years after a merger with Tribune Co. made them the largest shareholders of the Chicago-based media empire, the Chandlers have watched the value of their stake in Tribune decline along with the newspaper industry’s circulation and advertising revenue.
Today’s Chandlers are 170-some descendants of Otis and his son-in-law, Harry Chandler. Once a straight line of succession, father-to-son owners and publishers of the Times, the Chandlers are now a diverse collection of sons, daughters, cousins and in-laws that sprawls like the great city itself…