`Times-Mirror-Newsday' Chandler Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 1

(The following article about Times-Mirror-Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

Twenty-two percent of the Times-Mirror-Newsday media conglomerate was still owned by the family of then-Times-Mirror-Newsday directors Otis Chandler and Bruce Chandler in the early 1990s. The various Chandlers had inherited the Chandis Securities stock and Chandis Securities, in turn, then owned the Chandler family stock of Times-Mirror-Newsday in the early 1990s.

Like the families of the other dynasties connected to Times-Mirror-Newsday in the early 1990s either as stockholders or through a corporate directorship—the Guggenheims and the Rockefellers—the Chandler family helped build up its media and real estate empire by being ruthless in relation to U.S. labor and competing businesses and by always seeking to maximize profits by means of monopolization techniques.

In 1886, Harrison Gray Otis purchased 100 percent of the Los Angeles Times newspaper. By running the profit-making Los Angeles Times as a nonunion newspaper long after most other U.S. newspapers employed higher-wage union labor, Harrison Gray Otis was able to turn the Los Angeles Times into a profitable enterprise as his Los Angeles readership and advertising market expanded in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. According to the book Thinking Big by Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, “Harrison Gray Otis and the Los Angeles Times would earn the reputation as the most powerful and persistent enemy of organized labor in America, a role of which Otis was intensely proud.”

In the 1890s, Los Angeles Times publisher Otis was also a staunch supporter of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. In 1898, he even served as a volunteer U.S. General in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, in order to help the U.S. military machine turn the Philippines into a new U.S. colony by means of military violence that produced extensive “collateral damage” to many Filipino civilians.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Times-Mirror-Newsday Chandler Dynasty’s Hidden History—Part 2

Guggenheim & Chandlers' `Newsday-Los Angeles Times-Mirror' Merger's Hidden History

(The following article about Times-Mirror-Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)


On May 19, 1970, Harry Guggenheim sold his 51 percent share of Newsday to Los Angeles’ Times-Mirror media conglomerate in exchange for 600,000 shares of Times-Mirror common stock (worth over $20 million at that time) and $10 million in bank notes—despite a petition protesting the sale which was signed by 124 Newsday editors and reporters. And on Oct. 27, 1970, Times-Mirror purchased the remaining 49 percent of Newsday from Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim’s nephew and heir, Joseph Medill Patterson Albright for 1,042,500 shares of Times-Mirror common stock and 2,600 shares of convertible preferred Times-Mirror stock (worth over $37 million at that time).

In January 1971—less than a year after he sold Newsday—Harry Guggenheim was dead of cancer at the age of 80. He left most of his wealth to his cousin, Peter Q. Lawson-Johnston—whose mother was named Barbara Guggenheim. At Guggenheim Brothers and the Harry Guggenheim Foundation’s 537 Madison Ave. offices in Manhattan in the early 1990s, Lawson-Johnston still watched over that portion of the Guggenheim family fortune which he inherited from Newsday’s former owner.

Besides Harry Guggenheim, there was another member of the Guggenheim family who became involved in publishing. The son of Gladys Eleanor Guggenheim and grandson of Dan Guggenheim, Roger Straus Jr., founded the Farrar, Straus & Guggenheim book publishing company.

Asked by Downtown in 1991 whether the Guggenheim family still influenced Newsday at that time because it still owned Times-Mirror stock, then-New York Newsday Managing Editor James Toedtman replied: “I don’t know who owns stock in Times-Mirror.”

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Times-Mirror-Newsday Chandler Dynasty’s Hidden History—Part 1

Post-Patterson `Newsday''s Hidden History

(The following article about Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. In May 2008, the Tribune Company announced the sale of its Newsday to the Cablevision media conglomerate. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

After his much younger wife died in 1963, the 73-year-old Harry Guggenheim began to play a more active daily editorial role in running Newsday and began to search for a male heir for both his share of the Guggenheim fortune and his newspaper, in the event of his own death. Since the Guggenheim-Patterson marriage had produced no children, and Harry Guggenheim’s first two marriages had produced only daughters, he had to turn to his grandson, Dana Draper, to be his principal male heir. As this male heir, Dana Draper would acquire a multi-million dollar trust fund and become a partner in Guggenheim Brothers, the head of two Guggenheim foundations and, after Harry Guggenheim’s death, Newsday’s owner.

In the end, though, Harry Guggenheim decided not to let his grandson inherit either the Harry Guggenheim fortune or the ownership of Newsday because, in 1965, the then-25-year-old Dana Draper, according to The Guggenheims 1848-1988 book, was:

“a typical child of the 1960s. An exponent of the counter-culture…A sensitive young man who wore his long, wavy blond hair to his shoulders, he habitually sported a kerchief around his neck instead of a tie, wore jeans and T-shirts, instead of suits…Politically, Dana gravitated toward the New Left…Dana had artistic abilities and aspirations…Dana was also an environmental conservationist.”

After deciding that his grandson was too Bohemian and too politically radical to be trusted with either the Guggenheim fortune or the ownership of Newsday, Harry Guggenheim hunted around for another male heir. In 1967, he decided that U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary and chief of staff, [now-Schumann Foundation President and PBS commentator] Bill Moyers, should succeed him as Newsday owner and inherit much of his $50 million share of the Guggenheim fortune. According to David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be book, “Bill Moyers had always, first with Lyndon Johnson, then with Harry Guggenheim, shown an ability to charm older men…”

Moyers was brought into the Newsday editorial office as publisher to run the newspaper for Harry Guggenheim for a few years. But Harry Guggenheim eventually decided to sell Newsday to the Chandler family’s Times-Mirror media conglomerate and not let Moyers be his heir.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Guggenheim & Chandlers’ Newsday-Los Angeles Times-Mirror Merger’s Hidden History

The Guggenheim-Patterson Alliance and `Newsday''s Hidden History

(The following article about Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. In May 2008, the Sam Zell's Tribune Company announced its sale of its Newsday subsidiary to the Cablevision media conglomerate. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

The son of the organizer of the “Alaska Syndicate” that destroyed some of Alaska’s earth, used a small portion of the Guggenheim fortune to start publishing Newsday in 1940. Harry Guggenheim, son of Dan Guggenheim, had inherited a multi-million dollar trust fund at the age of 21, while his father lived; and he inherited another $2 million at the age of 39, when his father died. When he was 49-years-old, Harry Guggenheim—who was also U.S. ambassador to Cuba during the late 1920s and early 1930s—married for the third time in 1939. His new wife was then-32-year-old Alicia Patterson.

Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim’s great-grandfather, Joseph Medill, had founded Chicago’s Tribune newspaper and her grandfather, Robert Patterson, had been its editor-in-chief. Her father, Joseph Patterson, was a socialist in his youth who, after becoming more politically conservative, founded the Tribune Company’s Daily News tabloid subsidiary in New York City after World War I and became its editor-in-chief. Her aunt, Cissy Patterson, owned and managed the Washington Times-Herald in Washington, D.C. until 1948.

Shortly after the Guggenheim-Patterson marriage, Harry Guggenheim used $750,000 of the Guggenheim fortune to buy Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim a suburban newspaper, the Nassau Daily-Journal for her to operate under the name of Newsday. Newsday was intended to be little more than a suburban version of the Patterson family’s Daily News. Guggenheim gave 49 percent of Newsday’s stock to his wife, but made sure that he, not Patterson, retained 51 percent of Newsday’s stock—so that he could always make the final decision in any major business disagreement with his new wife.

Between 1940 and 1963, Newsday was essentially a Nassau County and Suffolk County-oriented Long Island tabloid, run according to the editorial whims of its editor-in-chief and publisher, Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim. Harry Guggenheim, its owner, was more concerned with the business departments of Newsday.

Although Harry Guggenheim was a Republican, when the Guggenheim-Patterson alliance began to sour on a personal level in the late 1940s, Newsday editor-in-chief and publisher Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim became involved romantically with the man who became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, Adlai Stevenson. The Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim love relationship with Stevenson was not mentioned in Newsday or by the other U.S. mass media institutions until 1976—11 years after Adlai Stevenson’s death and 13 years after Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim’s death at the age of 55 in 1963 (following an unsuccessful operation on her stomach).

Although Newsday lost money during its early years in the 1940s, Harry Guggenheim’s share of the Guggenheim fortune was large enough for him to bankroll a money-losing media operation for his wife for awhile. In 1945, Harry Guggenheim’s income from his investments in stocks and bonds was around $500,000 per year.

But as more and more people moved out to Suburbia from New York City to places like Levittown in Nassau and Suffolk counties in the late 1940s and the 1950s, Newsday became a profitable venture, as well as a public relations tool of the local Long island power structure.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Post-Patterson Newsday’s Hidden History

The Guggenheim Effect On The Earth

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

In The Guggenheims 1848-1988 book, John Davis described some of the environmental effects of the Guggenheim family’s late 19th century and early 20th century business activity:

“Piles of debris and broken rocks, and heaps of slag are all that remain of former Guggenheim operations in Colorado. In Bingham Canyon, Utah, where the Guggenheims created the world’s first open-pit copper mine, there is now a vast devastation, the earth so gouged and lacerated as to seem the scene of some cosmic disaster. Kennecott: an entire mountain destroyed in Alaska. Chuquicamata: an entire mountain destroyed in Chile. Rivers everywhere contaminated with the detritus of Guggenheim mines and smelters.”

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim-Patterson Alliance and Newsday’s Hidden History

The Guggenheim World War I Profits

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)


In the early 20th century, the Guggenheim family also formed the American Congo Company to operate an African mine in the Congo and also bought the Chuquicamata copper mines in Chile. As a result, when World War I began the Guggenheim family controlled 75 percent to 80 percent of the world’s silver, copper and lead and could dictate the prices of all three metals. Between 1915 and 1918, the Guggenheim family’s mines and smelters operated 24 hours a day at full capacity and the family was accused of war profiteering by some U.S. newspapers and some members of the U.S. Congress. Due to its World War I profits, the Guggenheim family became one of the five wealthiest families in the United States by the early 1920s.

During the Roaring Twenties, the Guggenheim family decided to relinquish its control over ASARCO and also to sell its Chilean copper mines to the Anaconda Company for $70 million. The 1923 sale of the Chuquicamata Chilean mines by the Guggenheim family represented, at the time, the largest-ever private sale of mining property.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim Effect On The Earth

Daniel Guggenheim And Alaska's Natural Resources

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

A year after Meyer Guggenheim’s death in 1905, his son, Daniel Guggenheim, formed “The Alaska Syndicate” in partnership with two other super-rich businessmen, J.P. Morgan and Jacob Schiff. According to The Guggenheims 1848-1988 book:

“Dan Guggenheim’s ambition became nothing less than to control all the natural resources of Alaska.

“Accordingly, the Alaska syndicate which soon came to be known as the `Guggenheim Trust,’ bought Kennecott Mountain and a hundred thousand acres of adjoining territory in the Wrangell chain, bought two hundred miles of railroad right-of-way to the sea, bought seacoast land at Katalla Bay, Valdez, and Cordova, bought the Northwestern Steamship Company, bought Northwestern Commercial, a service company, bought every Alaskan coal mine they could get their hands on, bought endless forests, and, perceiving that ships could transport fish as well as copper, bought, as a sideline, Northwestern Fisheries, the most important fishing and canning industry in the Western United States, Canada, and Alaska, for good measure.”

Within 6 years, the Guggenheim Trust operation in Alaska was producing another $3 million per year in dividends.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim World War I Profits