LOS ANGELES -- This will be a simple column about a relatively simple man who himself believed in keeping things simple. His name was Otis Chandler, surfer, champion weight-lifter, newspaper-builder. Last week, he died, at 78 years of age. He will go down in U.S. media history as a great man.

For readers in Asia as well as in America, it is vital to understand that Chandler, of The Los Angeles Times, was arguably the greatest American newspaper publisher of his era. This is to take nothing away from those deservedly famous East Coast newspaper families -- the Schulzbergers (New York Times) and the Grahams (Washington Post) -- who were also committed to the need for high-minded news media with a worldwide sense of ethical responsibility.

Chandler's fate was to be an American West Coast child, which presented him with a peculiar destiny. As far back as the '60s, his magnificent -- but hardly cost-free -- vision for the Los Angeles Times was to overcome an intellectual and literary atmosphere considerably less cosmopolitan than Manhattan's and less political than Washington's.