The Alhambra Source, which for almost a decade has provided news and information about Alhambra and the western San Gabriel Valley, announced this week that it is suspending publication Nov. 15 for financial reasons.

In a note to supporters, the Alhambra Source team said, “A community needs local news to thrive. Thriving means having a trustworthy, fact-based news source that is devoted to holding local government accountable and educating the public with quality information you just can’t get anywhere else.

“The Alhambra Source team has been dedicated to being this type of resource since 2010. We look forward to continuing our mission at a later date if and when financial support is forthcoming.”

In recent months, usage of the website had grown to nearly 35,000 unique visitors a month with some coming from nearby communities in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles.

Originally a project of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the Alhambra Source was founded as a way of providing independent news, features and commentary to one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Southern California and of assessing the viability of hyper-local journalism in a rapidly evolving media landscape.

“Local news outlets have been suffering for years now,” the Source said in announcing its suspension. “The reasons are many and complicated, but they boil down to an overall lack of foundation and community financial support. This in addition to shifting reader habits and the dominance of Google and Facebook’s pay-to-play advertising has made it so that continuing to move forward as an organization is fiscally impossible.”

From the outset, the Alhambra Source also sought to play an active role as a civic organization, running workshops to train young journalists and community contributors, to help immigrants tell their stories and to encourage financial literacy among college-bound high school students.

With community partners, it helped organize meet-the-candidate forums prior to City Council and school board elections. And it sponsored a number of student essay contests.

It had an advisory board of 11 Alhambrans and others interested in developing new ways to provide local news. Its network of civic groups included, among others, the Alhambra Latino Association, the Alhambra Teachers Association, Asian-Americans Advancing Justice-LA, Grassroots Alhambra, Voice of Immigrant Students Alhambra, the Alhambra Preservation Group, the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse and the League of Women Voters Pasadena.

The Alhambra Source was begun with substantial support from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg Trust. Now a project of Community Partners, its fiscal sponsor, it has received financial support from Sage Publications, Southern California Edison, Co., the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, the Fund for Nonprofit News at the Miami Foundation, Facebook, Google’s News Initiative, Local Media Association, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

For further information, contact Michael Parks ([email protected]; tel. 626.403.9476)