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The Mountain View Voice will not be resuming its print edition and plans to focus exclusively on online local news coverage and its daily emailed news digest, Express, Embarcadero Media President Bill Johnson announced today.

Bill Johnson, publisher of the Voice and president of Embarcadero Media.

The Voice editorial staff will continue providing daily news coverage on its website and in Express, the popular local news digest that is emailed to more than 10,000 people in Mountain View every weekday afternoon.

The Voice suspended its print edition on March 20, immediately after businesses were ordered to close and residents were directed to stay at home.

“We believe that online publishing is the future of local journalism and have been planning for a multi-year transition away from print for some time. We’ve spent over two decades building a strong website with an audience today of more than 190,000 unique monthly visitors, far more than our newspaper readership,” Johnson said.

“With so many of our print readers now following the local news on our website throughout the week and with the prospects of a slow business recovery, we concluded now was the right time to make this change,” he said.

When the COVID-19 crisis struck, many readers stepped up to help maintain the Voice’s news team. Hundreds became subscribing members and others made one-time contributions.

“Our future, and the future of all local news organizations, will depend on the ongoing subscription support of readers. Advertising can no longer sustain us. Whether the news comes to you on newsprint, in a daily email newsletter like Express or on our website, quality and dependable local journalism will not survive without many more readers subscribing at $5, $10 or more per month,” Johnson said.

“We are humbled by the support of the local journalism the Voice provides the community,” Johnson said.

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14 Comments

  2. Will you keep the online edition behind a paywall? You’ve throttled free access to less than 2 articles per week. It isn’t worth subscribing to the daily emails if I’m limited to only 7 actual articles per month.

  3. @Darin

    Our meter allows you to view 7 different stories during the month free of charge. The whole point of the meter is to make readers aware of how much they use and value our reporting and to then realize the importance of subscribing if they want to sustain a source of local news coverage. Your subscription gives you unlimited access to everything on the Voice website and our websites in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

  4. This is terrible news. I don’t really want to see The Voice every day, and I don’t like it on line. I like to sit down, take my time, read the front page, hear the paper crinkle when I turn to the inside pages, tear out pieces I want to look at later, and finally put it in the recycle bin.
    Such curmudgeony feedback! I am glad you are still there, still publishing, and forcing us to see the failings of our MV government, as well as its strengths.

  5. Since you are going to online only, I hope you can figure out how to include big, zoomable pictures in your stories. You usually include illustrations and photographs so small that important details are lost among the pixels.

    And don’t blame your sources like you have in the past. Demand higher resolution from your sources! You would not skip every other word in a paragraph would you? Well, by using small pictures you are essentially doing the same by losing vital information.

    If you go online only, start publishing like it is 2020 instead of 1999!

  6. @The Big Picture,

    You’re right, our treatment of photos online hasn’t been up to online publishing standards. We’ve been developing a solution to this over the last several months. Just last week we launched a new design for our stories online that allow for images to not only be presented in higher resolution but also much larger. Over the weeks ahead, as our editors learn how to best take advantage of the new photo display options available, you should see dramatic improvement.

  7. I remember, how with great fanfare, Bill Johnson announced that they were removing the paywall during the pandemic. Now it looks like, without any announcement, they have reinstated it.

    And since they are getting rid of the print addition they can no longer ask for donations under the name of ” we are losing ad revenue and need your donations to go on”

    Darin- do you actually find more than 7 stories a month you want to read? BTW, originally we got 30 stories a month, now we are down to 7. And we apparently are still not donating enough

  8. Since I paid $60/year for the hard copy to be mailed to me, It does not seem like an online-only subscription should cost as much.

  10. Those news sources aren’t nearly as comprehensive as the Voice. The third one has posted a total of 6 stories since the shelter in place began. The others have more stories but most have a tenuous relationship to MV.

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