Norman Chandler was born in Los Angeles on September 14, 1899, one of eight children of Harry Chandler and Marian Otis Chandler. His grandfather, Harrison Gray Otis, had been publisher of, the Los Angeles Times from 1881 to 1917, and his father from 1917 to 1944.

After dropping out of Stanford his senior year, Chandler started working at the Los Angeles Times on a seven year training program under his father, Harry Chandler, who had been its publisher since 1917. Norman Chandler became general manager in 1936, president in 1941 and at his father’s death in 1944, the third publisher of the newspaper.

He funded the construction of the Hollywood Palladium at a cost of $1.6 million in 1940. His wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, led Los Angeles’ cultural revitalization in the 50s and 60s, first with the restoration of the Hollywood Bowl, then with the construction of the Los Angeles Music Center (the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre).

The Times prospered under Chandler, and gained regional, as well as national, prominence. In 1947 it became the largest-circulation newspaper in Los Angeles, and in 1961 the Sunday paper had a circulation of more than one million.

Chandler also brought Times-Mirror Company into broadcasting; Times Mirror was a founding owner of television station KTTV in Los Angeles, which opened in January 1949. It became that station’s sole owner in 1951, after re-acquiring the minority shares it had sold to CBS in 1948. Times-Mirror also purchased a former motion picture studio, Nassour Studios, in Hollywood in 1950, which was then used to consolidate KTTV’s operations. Later to be known as Metromedia Square (then the Fox Television Center), the studio was sold along with KTTV to Metromedia in 1963.

Time Magazine honored Chandler in 1957 by putting him on the cover.

Chandler retired as publisher in 1960, leaving the job to his thirty year old son Otis Chandler.

After letting his son, Otis, take over as publisher of the Times, Norman Chandler remained as chairman of the board from 1961-1968. Over the objections of his conservative family, he succeeded in getting the corporation listed on the NYSE in 1964. He then used the public shares to continue his expansion and diversification of the company, acquiring New American Library book publishers in 1960; the book publisher World Publishing Company in 1962: C.V. Mosby Company (1967), which published medical college textbooks and reference books; Harry N. Abrams — a publisher of art and photography books (1966); legal publisher Matthew Bender; and air navigation publisher Jeppesen (1961).