All good things come to an end. It's been a pleasure developing North Valley Community News into something special editorially. By treating the content hole of the newspaper as space for substantive, well-reported, multi-source news, news-features, and human-interest stories about the five communities of the Northern San Fernando Valley, I believe I, Amy Lyons--both as a staff writer, and later as an editor-at-large--and about a dozen passionate freelance journalists and contributors brought a rare thing to readers.
As the publisher, Wayne Adelstein, moves to help the publication survive financially by doing away with a formal editorial department relying on press releases, lay contributions and his own writing, I thank him for allowing me nearly four years of unencumbered editorial authority and respecting the traditional firewall between editorial and advertising most of the time. I hope North Valley Community News economic fortunes change and Wayne can restore editorial content that could place the paper in a position to be a Valley-flavored alternative to LA Weekly. I know we were on our way...
