Dateline California : To Our Readers

The Los Angeles Times Washington Edition closes today with this edition, the result of economic pressures created by stagnant advertising and rising costs.

The closing of the edition has no impact on the operation of The Times reporting bureaus and advertising operations in Washington and New York.

The edition, a repackaging of the daily editions distributed in Southern California, maintained a circulation that was numerically tiny but included government policy and opinionmakers in Washington and New York City.

Richard T. Schlosberg III, publisher of The Times, explained that elimination of the edition was part of a sweep of cost-cutting moves that also included dropping several sections of the newspaper as circulated in Southern California.

“Given all of the changes that we were making, the continued circulation of the Washington Edition became a luxury we could not afford,” he said. “Despite its special circulation, it did not draw support from advertisers.”

Shelby Coffey III, editor and executive vice president, said the edition “has given The Times an important voice in Washington that will be missed.”

The edition was created in January, 1992, in answer to more costly distribution schemes: An early edition of the daily newspaper was shipped by air overnight to the capital and then distributed, often arriving only by mid- or late morning.

Technological advances made it possible instead to create pages in Los Angeles and ship them by satellite to a printing plant near Washington. During the past year, pages have been created electronically and transmitted over telephone lines to the print site.

Mail subscriptions to The Times remain available by calling 1-800-LATIMES.