He added: \u201cThis time last year, we still had a future. But it burned up in the fire, like most of the town.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smolinisky, who bought the struggling newspaper in 2012, wrote that shutting down the Pali Post, as it\u2019s known, was \u201cthe hardest decision I\u2019ve ever made.\u201d <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alan Smolinisky, owner of the Palisadian-Post, at his desk at the community newspaper\u2019s office in November 2013.<\/p>\n
(Christina House \/ For the Times)<\/p>\n
After the Jan. 7 fire, local businesses \u2014 either physically destroyed or suffering from a lack of customers \u2014 stopped purchasing advertisements in the Pali Post, the owner wrote.<\/p>\n
And the fire displaced readers themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Palisades became a ghost town in the wake of the fire,\u201d Smolinisky wrote. \u201cSubscriptions basically fell to zero. It\u2019s completely understandable. But you can\u2019t print a newspaper nobody reads.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Jan. 7 fire destroyed more than 2,600 businesses in Pacific Palisades, according to researchers<\/a> at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. It partially damaged more than 650 more.<\/p>\n Most, researchers said, were small businesses. <\/p>\n The newspaper started publishing in 1928, a few years after modern-day Pacific Palisades was founded<\/a> by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church who built an enormous campground<\/a> in Temescal Canyon for annual gatherings called Chautauquas<\/a>. <\/p>\n The newspaper started as the Palisadian, an eight-page weekly tabloid that sold for 5 cents per copy. <\/p>\n The lead story in the first edition, according to<\/a> the newspaper\u2019s website, was about $1 million being spent to pave a stretch of modern-day Chautauqua Boulevard and to plant trees near Santa Monica Canyon.<\/p>\n Over the years, the newspaper endeared itself to residents by recording the community\u2019s marriages, deaths and births (noting the first baby born each year) \u2014 as well as Little League games, Fourth of July parades and the Mr. and Miss Palisades contest. <\/p>\n But like many local new outlets, it struggled. <\/p>\n Beset by plummeting circulation and web traffic, advertising losses, ownership consolidation and changing reader habits in the era of smartphones and social media, thousands of U.S. newspapers<\/a> have closed over the last two decades. <\/p>\n Smolinisky, a real estate entrepreneur who was born and raised in the Palisades, is a part owner of the L.A. Dodgers.<\/a> He was 33 when he bought<\/a> the Palisadian Post and its then-office building on Via de la Paz. <\/p>\n In January 2013, The Times reported<\/a> that the deal \u201cincluded the Post\u2019s money-losing commercial printing business, which he closed,\u201d and that he told staffers he wanted to make the business profitable so he could restore full-time status to 16 employees, including seven in the newsroom, who had endured years of shortened hours and lesser pay. <\/p>\n In his note to readers on Thursday, Smolinisky said his parents \u2014 immigrants from Argentina who moved to the U.S. in 1975 and eventually bought their first home on Seabreeze Drive \u2014 read the paper for five decades.<\/p>\n Smolinisky wrote that after he returned to the Palisades after college, \u201cI subscribed immediately.\u201d Later, he and his wife published their wedding announcement in the paper. <\/p>\n \u201cI love the Pali Post because I love the Palisades,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis paper is our town in miniature\u2014committed, conversational and a little bit quirky.\u201d<\/p>\n The newspaper, he wrote, got up to 6,200 subscribers, which he considered a feat. <\/p>\n But the staff continued to shrink. The physical newsroom was recently moved out of Pacific Palisades to an office complex in Canoga Park. <\/p>\n In 2023, the longtime weekly newspaper \u2014 whose staff continued to decline \u2014 announced that print publication would be reduced to<\/a> twice a month. <\/p>\n Maryam Zar, chief executive of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday that it was no secret the newspaper had struggled for years, but it remained an important communication platform amid the long post-fire recovery. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think people will be surprised, but I think people will be devastated,\u201d Zar said of the closure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to lose something that\u2019s been a part of Pacific Palisades history for generations,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is so much information in those archives that literally tracks the history of the Palisades. We\u2019re all working so hard to preserve what we\u2019ve lost and be able to hand it to future generations … and this is really a loss.\u201d <\/p>\n