L.A. Daily Journal Publisher Robert Work Dies

Robert E. Work, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the largest daily law newspaper in the United States, is dead at age 58.

Work died Saturday at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, where he had been admitted with a blood clot. A Journal spokesman said Work, also publisher of the Daily Commerce, developed the clot after falling at home while gardening.

Work was a 22-year-old Burbank-based reporter when he was brought to the Journal as editor by his father in 1950. Telford Work, Robert’s father, headed the California Newspaper Service Bureau, which was established in 1934 to help newspapers throughout Los Angeles County attract legal advertising.

The bureau had just purchased the Journal, founded in 1888, and Telford Work became part owner and publisher.

Robert Work became publisher in 1977 when the newspaper group was forced to sell the Journal because of an antitrust suit.

He then began developing the Daily Commerce, then called the Journal of Commerce Review, into a business paper specializing in real estate, international trade and commerce.

The Journal now has a statewide circulation of 22,000, nearly double the 12,000 the New York Law Journal claims.

In addition to his father, Work is survived by his wife, Nancy, a daughter, two sons and his mother, Ada.

A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. June 25 at the Knox Presbyterian Church in Pasadena.

The family asks contributions to a scholarship fund they have established in his name at Pomona College, where Work was graduated in 1948.