USC, Crowd of 600 Honor Otis Chandler

Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980, was honored Wednesday by USC for transforming The Times into one of the nation’s finest newspapers.

Chandler, 72, received the Annenberg School for Communication’s first Lifetime Achievement Award for bringing “world-class status to Los Angeles as well as The Times.”

Other awards went to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and CNN Johannesburg correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

About 600 people attended the event at 20th Century Fox studios in West Los Angeles. They included 188 Times reporters and editors.

Funds raised from the event, about $100,000, are earmarked to support students studying in Annenberg School programs abroad.

Chandler was named publisher of the Times at age 32. During the next two decades, the Times experienced dramatic change, increasing its foreign and domestic bureaus from two to 34 and winning nine Pulitzer prizes.

He remained a member of the Times Mirror board of directors until he retired in 1998.

He had kept a low profile since he stepped down as publisher, but in November generated national news when he wrote a five-page letter criticizing a controversial profit-sharing arrangement between The Times and Staples Center.

In accepting the award, Chandler urged the newspaper to get past the controversy and move forward.

“It can and must be the newspaper of this century, as the world focuses its attention on the western part of this country and on Asia,” he said. “What an opportunity you have to build a world-class newspaper again. It was before, and you can reach those same journalistic heights again.”

Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School, said later that the decision to honor Chandler was made before the controversy.

“I hope this is a kind of healing event,” Cowan said. “It’s an occasion to celebrate what The Times has been and what it can be.”