THE FIRST EDITION OF LOS ANGELES TIMES IS PUBLISHED

Today, The Grandma continues her Communication Skills course with The Tintorers in Gavà. They have been talking about press, communication and fake news.

The Grandma has talked about the Los Angeles Times, one of the most historical American newspapers, based in El Segundo, California, whose first edition was published on a day like today in 1881.

 

The Los Angeles Times (sometimes abbreviated as LA Times or L.A. Times) is a daily newspaper based in El Segundo, California, which has been published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881.

It has the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S., and is the largest American newspaper not headquartered on the East Coast. The paper focuses its coverage of issues particularly salient to the West Coast, such as immigration trends and natural disasters. It has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of these and other issues. As of June 18, 2018, ownership of the paper is controlled by Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the executive editor is Norman Pearlstine.

In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910.

The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies.

In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and finalized their first union contract on October 16, 2019. The paper moved out of its historic downtown headquarters to a facility in El Segundo, California near Los Angeles International Airport in July 2018.

The Times was first published on December 4, 1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner.  

 

It was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, owned by Jesse Yarnell and T.J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill, Cole and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, and it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication.

In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara to become the paper's editor. Otis made the Times a financial success.

More information: Los Angeles Times

Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was 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. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley.

The efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the bombing of its headquarters on October 1, 1910, killing twenty-one 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.

Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new Times headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True.

The Los Angeles Times was beset in the first decade of the 21st century by a change in ownership, a bankruptcy, a rapid succession of editors, reductions in staff, decreases in paid circulation, the need to increase its Web presence, and a series of controversies.

For two days in 2005, the Times experimented with Wikitorial, the first Wiki by a major news organization to allow readers to combine forces to produce their own editorial pieces. It was shut down after being besieged with inappropriate material.

More information: Los Angeles Times-Twitter

The newspaper moved to a new headquarters building in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport, in July 2018.

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 and the morning Los Angeles Examiner merged to become the Herald-Examiner. The Herald-Examiner published its last number in 1989.

In 2014, the Los Angeles Register, published by Freedom Communications, then-parent company of the Orange County Register was launched as a daily newspaper to compete with the Times. By late September of the same year, the Los Angeles Register was folded.

More information: Los Angeles Times-Youtube

What gunpowder did for war
the printing press has done for the mind.

Wendell Phillips