Obituary : Herbert Krauch; Longtime L.A. Newspaperman

Herbert H. Krauch, whose first newspaper job was as a $4-a-week office boy on the Los Angeles Herald in 1912 and whose last was as editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner when it was the largest circulating afternoon paper in the country, died Monday in Gilman Hot Springs.

Krauch was 96 and the acknowledged dean of journalism in Los Angeles.

His career started when Los Angeles was a town of 300,000 people, most of whom got around by horse and buggy and who had their choice of as many as a dozen daily newspapers at 1 cent per copy.

When he retired in 1963 he could look back on a life dominated by splashy headlines telling of lurid murders and political intrigue in an era when competition for sales sometimes stimulated journalists more than accuracy.

Although his accomplishments were many, his proudest deed, he said in a 1986 memoir he forwarded to The Times, was an 18-month Herald-Express editorial campaign that led to the installation of center dividers on the county’s freeways.

Before that 1954 decision by the state Division of Highways, motorists were careening into each other in head-on crashes that claimed hundreds of lives.

Krauch’s entire career was at the Herald, as it was first known, then the Herald-Express and finally the Herald Examiner after the morning Los Angeles Examiner was melded in 1962 into William Randolph Hearst’s afternoon publication.

At that time the combined paper had a circulation of 730,000, more than twice the population of the city when Krauch began his newspaper career.

Krauch was considered among the most tantalizing headline writers of his time. Perhaps the one that will live beyond him was “Doolittle Dood It,” commemorating Gen. Jimmy Doolittle’s 1942 bombing raid on Tokyo.

That was the second time that Tokyo figured prominently in Krauch’s career, the first coming in 1923 when he almost single-handedly produced an “extra” edition on the mammoth earthquake that had devastated the city.

In its heyday the Herald-Express produced up to eight editions a day and Krauch and his city editor, Agness Underwood, tried to make each more entertaining than the last.

After retiring, Krauch taught at UCLA from 1964 to 1965 and then served eight years as a director or president of the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Hannah, sons Bob and John, a daughter, Karla, 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at 1:30 p.m. at Miller-Jones Chapel in Hemet.