BILL THOMAS: LA Times Editor, Native Bay Cityan, Reaped Pulitzer Prizes

His Father was Associated with the Davidson Shipbuilding Founder, Heirs

February 27, 2014
By: Dave Rogers

Bill Thomas was one of the greatest representatives of the glory days of American newspapers whose father was a prominent figure in the heady days of Bay City shipbuilding and finance.

His journalistic career rivaled that of Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times.

William F. Thomas, a native Bay Cityan who was editor of The Los Angeles Times while it won 11 Pulitzer Prizes, died Sunday at age 89.

"Thomas led the paper during an extraordinary period of expansion in the 1970s and 1980s, when the paper widened its reach nationally and abroad and became a showcase for literary journalism," the newspaper reported.

The Times also called Thomas "urbane, dapper, cool and collected." Despite his high position, he welcomed Bay Cityans who called on him in LA and was keen to hear news from his hometown, although he seldom visited here. He was a contemporary of the late Thomas F. Tabor, Bay City downtown business and Rotary Club maven.

Thomas died Sunday of natural causes at his home in Sherman Oaks, said his son, Pete.

He was born in 1924 to William F. and Irene Thomas. The 1929 City Directory listed his father as secretary to Capt. James Davidson. By 1942 he was listed at 1521 Helen Street and occupation as secretary to James. E. and Edward C. Davidson, financiers and heirs of the shipbuilding tycoon. By 1954 Thomas Senior was vice president of Bay Trust and secretary of the Davidson Building Company.

Thomas was a 1942 graduate of Bay City Central High, as was Mr. Tabor, and both attended Northwestern University. Thomas earned bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern and worked at newspapers in Buffalo, N.Y., and in Sierra Madre, California, before becoming editor, in 1957, of the Los Angeles Mirror.

He became Times assistant city editor in 1962 and metropolitan editor in 1965, just before the biggest local story of the year erupted -- the Watts riots. The Times' coverage of the riots brought the paper's first Pulitzer for local reporting, in 1966.

"He was perhaps the least well-known of any editor of any major newspaper," said former Times Publisher and CNN President Tom Johnson. "He never sought the spotlight for himself. His passion was for great writing."

The Times' seventh editor, who led the paper from 1971 to 1989, Thomas oversaw the launch of the Sunday magazine, Book Review and daily Business and Calendar sections; opened 11 domestic and foreign bureaus; and started regional editions in San Diego and the San Fernando Valley.

Mr. Thomas aimed to put the Los Angeles Times on the level of its more established rivals, the New York Times and the Washington Post. "Publisher Otis Chandler brought Thomas to The Times in 1962 and later surprised many newsroom veterans by choosing him to lead the paper over candidates with more lustrous, East Coast credentials," wrote The Times in his obituary.

Thomas was said to have "emphasized originality in reporting and writing, giving reporters the freedom to conjure stories that did not usually appear in newspapers.

Alongside breaking news and investigative reports, "there were a couple of stories in the paper every day that you might have found only in the New Yorker or a handful of other places, that were beautifully written, deeply reported, full of insight," said Tom Rosenstiel, a media reporter during Thomas' years who now directs the nonprofit American Press Institute in Reston, Va.

In an age increasingly dominated by television, Thomas believed that newspapers had to break with rigid formulas of the past -- "the stiff-necked approach to news," he once called it. He was not a fan of market research, instead championing story ideas that he personally found interesting or important.

"He figured that in a metropolis the size of Los Angeles, there would always be enough people who shared his interests and taste to make the paper successful," David Shaw, then The Times' media critic, wrote shortly after Thomas retired. Peter J. Boyer, who wrote for the Los Angeles Times and later the New York Times, called the West Coast paper during the Thomas years "the Club Med of journalism," recalled The Times.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-bill-thomas-20140224,0,7864279.story#ixzz2uRsXhLxT