Times CEO Elected Chairman of ANPA

Robert F. Erburu on Tuesday was elected chairman of the American Newspaper Publishers Assn., the professional association of the nation’s newspaper industry. The post has a one-year term.

Erburu is chairman and chief executive of Times Mirror Co., which owns newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and Newsday in New York, as well as various cable, broadcasting and other magazine, book and electronic publishing enterprises.

The publishers association represents 1,400 daily and non-daily newspapers in the United States, Canada and the Western Hemisphere. Erburu succeeds Lloyd G. Schermer, chairman and chief executive of Lee Enterprises Inc. in Davenport, Iowa.

Erburu, 60, has been chairman of Times Mirror since 1986. He was named chief executive in 1981 and was president from 1974 to 1986. He joined the company in 1961, becoming general counsel and secretary that year. He had been an attorney with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles.

Erburu is also chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, a director of the Tejon Ranch Co., and a director of various other organizations including the Business Council, the National Business Roundtable and the California Business Roundtable.

He is a trustee of the Brookings Institution, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, and the Tomas Rivera Center, a national Latino policy institute. He also serves on the Archdiocesan Finance Council of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is a director or board member of various other cultural, civic, charitable and educational organizations.

A native of Ventura, Erburu received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California in 1952, where he was editor of the student newspaper, and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1955.

He and his wife, Lois Stone Erburu, live in Los Angeles and have two daughters, Susan Erburu Reardon and Dr. Lisa A. Erburu. They have three grandchildren.