Chandler led move to buy Pilot

Former Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, who spearheaded the Times’ 1961 purchase of the Daily Pilot, died Monday at his home in Ojai. He was 78.

The cause was a degenerative brain disorder, according to an e-mail from Times publisher Jeff Johnson.

A scion of a newspapering dynasty, Chandler became the Times’ fourth publisher in 1960.

He was known for thinking big: The year the Times acquired the Pilot, it also became the first newspaper to put computers into its newsroom.

During his 20 years as Times publisher, Chandler pursued a vision of bringing other papers, big and small, into the fold of the company, which was then known as the Times Mirror Co.

In 1961, publisher Walter Burroughs merged two newspapers ? the Costa Mesa Globe Herald and the 2-year-old Newport Harbor Pilot ? to create the Orange Coast Daily Pilot.

That same year, however, doctors warned Burroughs he wouldn’t live much longer, prompting him to sell the paper to the Times Mirror Co.

Former Pilot managing editor Chuck Loos reminisced in 2004 about Chandler visiting his new acquisition in 1962. Chandler wandered into the darkroom by mistake and accidentally exposed several rolls of film, ruining them, Loos wrote.

He ducked out before being spotted by darkroom chief Dick Drake, but he got an earful despite being the boss, according to Loos.

Chandler impressed former Newport Beach resident and newspaperman Richard Reddick, whose father owned the Newport Harbor News Press ? one of several competing small dailies in Orange County at the time ? from 1947 to 1962.

“The L.A. Times was working hard to develop its market when Walt Burroughs decided to negotiate with them,” and Chandler realized Orange County was a key to that, Reddick said Monday.

Reddick remembered Chandler giving a presentation to his class at USC on “the megalopolis that is the Times,” and pointing out an area that stretched from Santa Barbara to the San Diego border.

“He said, ‘This is the Times and these are the areas that we’re going to see in the next few decades filling in, growing up, and it’s going to be the jewel of the West Coast,’” Reddick remembered.

“At the time I was very impressed, because it was a good prediction of what has happened.”

Chandler gave up the Times’ helm in 1980 but became chairman of the company. The Times Mirror Co. sold the Daily Pilot to New Jersey-based Ingersoll Publications Co. in 1983.

Chandler remained on the board until 1997. The Times Mirror Co. bought the Daily Pilot a second time in 1993, when it acquired a total of five Southern California papers, including the Huntington Beach Independent.