A Note to Our Readers
The Los Angeles Times plans to stop publishing three community newspapers: the Glendale News-Press, Burbank Leader and La Cañada Valley Sun.
Regrettably, 14 staff members who work for those titles will be laid off with severance. The job losses affect members of the Los Angeles Times Guild, as well as managers.
Final editions of the weekly News-Press and Leader are planned for Saturday. The last issue of the weekly Valley Sun is slated for April 23. The community papers’ work will be archived at latimes.com.
This was a difficult business decision in a trying time for community newspapers compounded by the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The three titles, while journalistically sound, are operating at significant losses.
Advertising has fallen off for several years, and each publication’s print circulation — paid and free combined — is about 5,000 copies at each of the three newspapers.
The small newspapers have a long history. The Glendale News-Press dates to 1905, while the Burbank Leader was founded in 1985, a successor to the Burbank Daily Review, which was founded in 1908. The La Cañada Valley Sun started in April 1946.
The publications, which cover local government, schools and sports, have won multiple awards from the California Newspapers Publishers Assn., the Los Angeles Press Club and other organizations.
The Los Angeles Times purchased the News-Press and Leader in 1993 and the Valley Sun in 2005. The papers, which became part of the Times Community News division, were inserted into The Times and distributed for free at local businesses and in newspaper racks.
The Times will continue to circulate in Glendale, Burbank and La Cañada. The Metro staff, which has been expanded under new ownership, will continue to cover larger news stories in those areas. The Times will also continue to invest in its robust California report, which spans Los Angeles County’s 88 cities and the region beyond.
The two remaining Times Community News publications, the Daily Pilot and TimesOC, will continue publishing in Orange County.