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Los
Angeles Times front page 2006
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 third-most widely distributed newspaper in the United
States.
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 was the second-most by any paper in one year
(the first was The New York Times in 2002).
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. Otis also was
staunchly Republican, which was reflected in the paper's editorial and
news content. Today, however, the paper has a distinctive
liberal/Democratic position.
FEATURES
Among the Times's staff are columnists Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison, music critics Robert Hillburn and Randy Lewis, film critic Kenneth Turan and entertainment industry columnist Patrick Goldstein. 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. Former sports editor Bill Dwyre is also a columnist.
One of the Times's features is "Column One," a feature that appears daily on the front page to the left-hand side. Established in September 1968, it is a place for the weird and the interesting; in the How Far Can a Piano Fly? (a compilation of Column One stories) introduction, Patt Morrison writes that the column's purpose is to elicit a "Gee, that's interesting, I didn't know that" type of reaction.
The Times also embarked on a number of investigative journalism pieces. A series in December 2004 on the King-Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles led to a Pulitzer Prize and a more thorough coverage of the hospital's troubled history. Lopez wrote a five-part series on the civic and humanitarian disgrace of Los Angeles' Skid Row, which became the focus of the 2009 motion picture, The Soloist. It also won 62 awards at the SND awards.
FESTIVAL
OF BOOKS
In 1996, the Times started the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, in association with the University of California, Los Angeles. It has panel discussions, exhibits, and stages during two days at the end of April each
year. In 2011, the Festival of Books was moved to the University of Southern
California.
BOOK PRIZES
Since 1980, the Times has awarded annual book prizes. The categories are now biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. 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".
COMPETITION
In the 19th century, the chief competition to the Times was the Los Angeles Herald, followed by the smaller Los Angeles Tribune. In December 1903, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst began publishing the Los Angeles Examiner as a direct morning competitor to the
Times. In the 20th Century, the Los Angeles Express was an afternoon competitor, as was Manchester Boddy's Los Angeles Daily News, a Democratic newspaper.
By the mid-1940s, the Times was the leading newspaper in terms of circulation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 1948, it launched the Los Angeles Mirror, an afternoon tabloid, to compete with both the Daily News and the merged Herald-Express. In 1954, the Mirror absorbed the Daily News. The combined paper, the Mirror-News, ceased publication in 1962, when the Hearst afternoon Herald-Express was merged with the morning Los Angeles Examiner.
LINKS
General
references:
-
Edward
Maddin Ainsworth, History of Los Angeles Times, ca. 1940.
-
Robert
Gottlieb, Thinking Big, New York: Putnam, 1977.
-
David
Halberstam, The Powers That Be, New York: Knopf, 1979.
-
Jack
R. Hart, The information empire: The rise of the Los Angeles Times
and the Times Mirror Corporation, Washington, D.C.: University
Press of America, 1981.
Specific
references:
-
"Circulation
at the Top 20 Newspapers", The Associated Press,
-
2007
Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation (PDF).
BurrellesLuce (2007-03-31).
-
Inventing
the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985): 228.
-
Dennis
McDougal, Privileged son: Otis Chandler and the rise and fall of
the L.A. Times dynasty, Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2002
-
ProQuest
Dissertation Abstracts, accessed June 8, 2007.
-
Rainey,
James, "Newspaper Circulation Continues to Fall," Los
Angeles Times 1 May 2007: D1.
-
Editor
& Publisher. "California
Split: 57 More Job Cuts at L.A. Times".
-
Editor
& Publisher. "Pulitzer
Winner Explains Why She Took L.A. Times Buyout".
-
Why
I'm Leaving The L.A. Times from The Huffington Post
-
Mother
Jones. "Breaking
the News".
-
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-08-newspape
-
Tribune
goes to Zell, from the April 3, 2007 edition of the Chicago
Sun-Times
-
Salon.
"Meltdown
at the L.A. Times", 1999-11-05.
-
Editor
& Publisher. "Garfield
no more?".
-
Los
Angeles Times. "Bomb
Iran", 2006-11-19.
-
Los
Angeles Times. "Editor
Resigns over Killed Opinion Section", 2007-03-22.
-
Los
Angeles Times. "Grazergate,
an Epilogue", 2007-03-22.
-
Deadline
Hollywood Daily. "LA
Times Publisher's Friend and Tribune Co Ex-Director Don Rumsfeld was
asked to Guest-Edit after Grazer", 2007-03-25.
-
http://www.latimes.com/extras/bookprizes/index.html
Los Angeles Times Book Prizes home page
News
A to Z directory, please click on the links below to find your favourite
news or to contact the media to tell your story:
There
was a time when you had the time to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.
Now we rarely speak to our partners and have to schedule time to touch
base on the important issues. No wonder the divorce rate is rising and no
wonder our values are changing to reflect the disposable society we are
creating.
Instead
of helping our neighbours, some of them we fear, simply because we don't
understand their culture and they ours. Whereas, the world is shrinking
due to globalisation and free information exchange, much of which is
achieved via the internet.
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