By: (AP) Scott Schmidt, a publisher who transformed the
Daily News of Los Angeles from a suburban shopper into a major metropolitan daily, has died. He was 66.
Schmidt died at his home early Wednesday of apparent heart failure, said his son, John.
"He lived and breathed the newspaper business," John Schmidt said. "Every morning when I woke there were at least six newspapers on our driveway. He was always looking at the competition."
The Tribune Co., for whom Schmidt worked in Chicago, bought the old
Valley News and Green Sheet in suburban Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and sent Schmidt to turn it from a giveaway shopper into the
Daily News.
"He fashioned a newspaper that has grown into the true voice of the San Fernando Valley," said David Fleming, chairman of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley.
Schmidt was publisher of the newspaper, which now has a daily circulation of 210,000, from 1975 to 1983.
He started in the industry by delivering newspapers as a boy in his hometown of Pekin, Ill. By the time he was 14 he had become a sportswriter for the
Pekin Star, covering local games and Bradley University in neighboring Peoria, his son said.
He became the paper's sports editor at 16.
He studied journalism at Bradley and Northwestern University but never earned his degree, his son said.
While in college, he was a married father working as night managing editor of the
Chicago Herald American, which became
Chicago Today, the afternoon paper of the Tribune Co. He was managing editor from 1971-74.
When the paper folded, he worked for the
Chicago Tribune for about a year as managing editor before heading to California.
In 1983, he returned to Chicago and worked as an executive at the
Tribune for several years.
Later, he returned to Los Angeles, where he bought and published several trade and community newspapers and worked for a media company.
Schmidt was born in 1937 in Pekin, where his father was a foreman at a flour mill.
Besides his son John, Schmidt is survived by his wife, Janice; a second son, Christopher; daughter Julie Stauber; a sister; and seven grandchildren.
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