• by Melynda Fuller , April 20, 2020

Three community papers published by the Los Angeles Times are going dark as the company faces financial fallout stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Glendale News-Press, Burbank Leader and La Cañada Valley Sun, part of the Times Community News division, are affected.

The News-Press and Burbank Leader, both weeklies, ceased publication April 18, while the Valley Sun is set to publish its last issue April 23.

The company made the announcement last week.

Fourteen staffers are affected, parting ways with the company with severance. Some are part of the Los Angeles Times Guild, as well as management.

“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,” explained a reader's note on the Glendale News-Press site.

“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 News-Press and Leader were bought by the L.A. Times in 1993, while the Valley Sun was added to the company’s portfolio in 2005.

The L.A. Times owns two other community papers, the Daily Pilot and TimesOC, which will continue to publish.

The announcement comes as the L.A. Times revealed it had furloughed staffers for up to 16 weeks and instituted pay reductions for 12 weeks for senior managers across editorial and business sides of the company.