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Former Instances writer Richard T. “Dick” Schlosberg III, who led the newspaper throughout an period that noticed double-digit earnings and the emergence of the web, which would ultimately decimate the business, died Wednesday in San Antonio. He was 79.
The trigger was mind most cancers, in line with his son, Dr. Richard T. Schlosberg IV.
Schlosberg spent a decade at The Instances, arriving from the Denver Publish in 1988 to function president and retiring as writer in 1997. The paper was then the flagship of the Chandler household’s Instances-Mirror chain and the nation’s second-largest metropolitan paper with a newsroom of 1,500 journalists and a circulation that topped 1 million. Reporters flew first-class and Picasso lithographs adorned the partitions of an government eating room.
Schlosberg in an undated photograph. He graduated from the U.S. Air Drive Academy.
(Schlosberg household)
“There are not any dangerous days as writer of the L.A. Instances,” Schlosberg stated in 1997. “There are good days and nice days.”
To rejoice blockbuster advert revenues within the mid-Nineties, The Instances rented out the Home of Blues on the Sundown Strip and employed the Laker Ladies to carry out. Schlosberg after which government editor Shelby Coffey carried out “Wild Factor” backed by a band.
“We weren’t with out our troubles at numerous occasions and having to chop and squeeze, however definitely wanting again on it… it was fairly a excessive level,” Coffey stated.
In a single indication of the status afforded Instances brass in that period, actor and singer Barbra Streisand invited Coffey and Schlosberg and their wives to her residence for a dinner with actor Warren Beatty, which the previous editor recalled as “a pleasing night.”
Then Los Angeles Instances writer Richard T. Schlosberg, left, with David Laventhol, heart, and President Clinton in 1994.
(Los Angeles Instances Historical past Middle)
In the meantime, the clouds gathered in Silicon Valley. Harry Chandler, then heading up enterprise improvement, traveled to Palo Alto in 1995 to satisfy two Stanford graduates, David Filo and Jerry Yang, looking for funding for a brand new tech firm.
On his return, he advised Schlosberg and Coffey: “I want an hour to inform you what the web is and why we must always purchase an organization known as Yahoo.”
The Instances supplied $1.6 million for about half the nascent firm — an funding that might have drastically altered the newspaper’s historical past — however the Yahoo founders backed out.
Schlosberg was identified for displaying consideration to rank and file workers. He banned smoking within the Denver newsroom within the Nineteen Eighties, citing the hazard to nonsmokers, his son recalled, and in L.A., he sought out enter for large choices from low-level workers.
Schlosberg in 1996.
(Lee Salem Pictures)
“He was an individual who would at all times go to the supply of knowledge. He didn’t undergo a typical chain of command in a approach,” stated Dickson Louie, who labored below him at The Instances.
Throughout Schlosberg’s tenure, The Instances gained Pulitzer Prizes for its protection of the 1992 L.A. riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake and was a Pulitzer finalist 9 occasions.
The son of a World Conflict II pilot, Schlosberg was born in 1944 in Ardmore, Okla., and graduated from the U.S. Air Drive Academy. He served two excursions of responsibility in Vietnam, the place he flew greater than 200 fight help missions, in line with an obituary within the San Antonio Report. He obtained an MBA from Harvard earlier than starting a newspaper profession.
Following his retirement from The Instances, he served as CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Basis, the Los Altos-based charity arrange by the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard and his spouse.
He’s survived by his spouse of 58 years, Kathy, his son and his daughter Deb Wealthy Herczeg, in addition to 5 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
After he left The Instances, Schlosberg adopted with concern because the paper cycled by means of totally different homeowners and plenty of rounds of layoffs. Then-parent firm Tribune filed for chapter in 2008 and the newsroom dwindled beneath 400 journalists earlier than the Quickly-Shiong household returned the paper to native possession in 2018.
Schlosberg and 4 others shaped a committee to advocate for retired Instances-Mirror workers and spent 15 years combating for cash due them below deferred compensation plans.
“It was on precept,” stated former Instances basic counsel William Niese, who additionally labored on the committee. “Dick Schlosberg was a really rich man and he didn’t have to do it in any respect.”
Workers ultimately collected a few third of what was owed them by means of the chapter proceedings, Niese stated.
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