Los Angeles Daily News history

The Los Angeles Times was long dominated by the Chandler family, beginning when Harry Chandler succeeded his father-in-law, Otis, as publisher in 1917.

The Times launched the United States’ first newspaper-owned radio station in 1922.

In 1928 it began to use airplanes to deliver newspapers to other cities.

In 1964 the Times Mirror Company became listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the first general-interest newspaper corporation to do so.

In 1971, the newspaper was sold to the Tribune Company by the original family owners.

After Baquet worked in New Orleans for nearly a decade, he moved (1984) to the Chicago Tribune as its deputy metropolitan editor and chief investigative reporter.

In 1985, Tribune bought KTLA, and due to ownership laws of the time, Tribune sold the paper to Jack Kent Cooke, who spent millions of dollars building state of the art offices and expanding coverage to include the entire San Fernando Valley.

Upon Cooke's death in 1997, William Dean Singleton's MediaNews purchased the newspaper and consolidated it with his other Southern California MediaNews holdings into the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

In 2000 Baquet accepted an offer from John Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, to become managing editor.

When Carroll quit in 2005, Baquet assumed the newsroom’s top job, becoming the first African American to helm a major newspaper.

On May 14, 2014, he was named executive editor, replacing Jill Abramson, the paper’s first female executive editor, who left abruptly after less than three years in the top post.

In 2017 the Times entered a particularly turbulent period, which included growing tensions between journalists and management and a succession of editors in chief.