Does this print edition of The Canyon Chronicle feel a little light in your hands?
Seem a bit skimpy on content online? That’s because it is a 50% cut-back on the 16 pages we normally publish.
That is what happens when advertisers don’t honor their obligation to pay for the ads we publish.
This community newspaper was established to keep residents and visitors alike informed about Topanga, a magical oasis in the Santa Monica Mountains surrounding the Greater Los Angeles area. It is an open forum for our community to express their views, promote their businesses, non-profit organizations and solicit the spirit of volunteerism. It is a platform for the abundance of artists and the many creatives living in Topanga.
We are a busy little town with good restaurants, businesses and a world-renown theater, Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum. That’s why the Topanga Messenger was able to publish for 40 years. I was founding editor of the Messenger and when the presses stopped on December 1, 2016 (40 years to the day from its founding), I couldn’t bear not to see a newspaper continuing in an update of that business model and its principles.
Unlike the Messenger that depended upon advertisers as well as a dwindling subscriber list by the time it suspended publication, The Canyon Chronicle provides a free service delivered to every residence and business in the canyon. We chose to finance the newspaper solely through advertising. Unfortunately, it takes just one advertiser to impact what is a very narrow profit margin and limit our outreach.
Our answer to those advertisers who are withholding payment, is to use these eight pages to celebrate those advertisers who do fulfill their obligation to support us. For that we are supremely grateful. This issue is dedicated to those who have advertised with us during the three-plus years we’ve been in business.
Not all of our writers’ articles and columns are published here and they are disappointed that their efforts to provide content for the community won’t be published this time. Our sincere apologies to them.
For this time, we invite you to take special notice of our advertisers and acknowledge their integrity, as well as their commitment to local endeavors to serve the community. This is your opportunity to recognize what amazing resources we have in these local businesses and non-profits. What you need may well be here, around the bend or right under your nose.
The Canyon Chronicle is a great pleasure to bring to the Topanga community. We actually get love letters! It’s always good to be acknowledged. We hit a glitch this time due to one advertiser who hasn’t paid for ads that we’ve published in good faith. That inspired us to acknowledge the advertisers who continue to support us with a celebratory special edition in their honor. This edition, pared down to eight pages, is dedicated to them.
The Most Important Thing You Need to Know
Topanga is no stranger to disaster. We live in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ).
With so many new people moving into the canyon, they need to know that there are resources and protocols established for when the bad thing happens…like the Woolsey fire in 2018 and the recent Owen incident last month that threatened the Viewridge tract and Top O’ Topanga.
More than 30 years ago, community volunteers who lived through, for example, the road washout of the 1980 flood, the fire of 1993 and the Northridge earthquake of 1994, created the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness (TCEP), a non-profit, all-volunteer organization based in Topanga, California. For close to three decades, TCEP has provided emergency preparedness education and disaster status information to residents of Topanga, Malibu and surrounding areas.
Are you prepared? Are you signed in to Cal Fire’s “Alert LA?” The Pulse Point app? Do you have the “Topanga Survival Guide?” Do you have an FRS radio to communicate in case the power goes out?
Contact TCEP to see the resources and learn about volunteer opportunities: tcep.org
