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Introduction to Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times published its first edition on Dec. 4, 1881 under the name of the Los Angeles Daily Times.
The newspaper's two original founders, however, soon ran out of money and the fledgling paper was inherited by its printer, the Mirror Printing Office and Book Bindery. The Mirror Company promptly began searching for an editor who could help it recoup its losses. The company soon found its man: former military officer Harrison Gray Otis.
Gen. Otis invested in the paper and quickly turned it into a financial success. In 1884, he and a partner purchased the entire Times and Mirror properties and incorporated them as the Times-Mirror Company. Two years later, Otis bought out his partner.
From the beginning, Gen. Otis was an unabashed supporter of Los Angeles. He believed in the city's future and promoted it with all the energy - and all the newsprint - at his disposal. Los Angeles became a boomtown, overflowing with Easterners and Midwesterners seeking the riches Otis' newspaper promised.
As the city grew, so did The Times. However, the competition among newspapers was fierce, and it was not until the mid-1940s that The Times became the No. 1 newspaper in Los Angeles.
Today, The Times ranks as the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country.
The Time's editorial department is one of the most formidable in the world -- 23 foreign, 9 national, five California and six regional bureaus -- and the largest news-gathering operation in California. The Times' numerous journalism awards include 30 Pulitzer Prizes, four of which are Gold medals for public service.
The Times publishes four daily regional editions covering the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the San Fernando Valley, and Orange and Ventura counties. The Times' National Edition, launched in late 1998, is distributed outside this home market.
The weekday edition of the Times contains seven sections: Main News, California, Business, Sports, Calendar and Classifieds. On Sunday, these are expanded with Book Review, Sunday Calendar, Comics Plus, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Opinion, Real Estate, Travel, TV Times and CareerBuilder.
The Times publishes four weekly sections: Health, Food, Highway 1 and Calendar Weekend.
The paper is published at three strategically located production facilities in Southern California: the Olympic plant in Los Angeles, the Orange County plant in Costa Mesa and the San Fernando Valley plant in Chatsworth.
The newspaper's Web site,www.latimes.com, is one of the leading sources for national and international news and information on the World Wide Web, and the primary source of news and information for and about Southern California.
Latimes.com has more than 50,000 content pages and the site is updated throughout the day, making it one of the most comprehensive news sites on the World Wide Web. Every day more than 3,000 stories are uploaded to provide readers with all of the day's news. In addition, users have access to one million stories from past issues of the Los Angeles Times available in the latimes.com archives dating back to 1985.
In 2000, The Times became a Tribune Publishing Company when Times Mirror merged with Tribune Company.
www.latimes.com
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