Four Napa County weekly newspapers will stop publishing on May 22, the company that owns them announced Wednesday afternoon. In a letter posted to the Calistoga Tribune website and signed “The Highway 29 team,” Highway 29 Publishing told readers that May 22 will be the last day it publishes the Calistoga Tribune, the Yountville Sun, the American Canyon Current and the Napa County Times. The company described the move as a “hiatus,” not a permanent close, but offered no date for resuming publication and named no buyer, investor or successor.
Staff have been laid off and freelance contracts cancelled effective May 22, ac- cording to the letter. Chief executive Marc Hand is stepping away from the company on May 31.
The letter gives no specific reason for the shutdown, citing only “the complicated challenge of keeping community news alive and thriving.” It frames the closure as “the end of one chapter, a necessary pause.”
What’s closing
The four titles cover Calistoga, Yountville, American Canyon and the wider county. The Calistoga Tribune and the Yountville Sun are the only dedicated weekly news- papers in their respective cities. The American Canyon Current is one of the few publications focused on Napa County’s southernmost city. The Napa County Times runs as a countywide weekly.
The closure takes effect on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. By the time readers in the upper valley return from the holiday, three of the county’s small cities will be without a hyperlocal newspaper, and the county will have lost its only weekly with a countywide brief.
What the letter does not say
The letter does not name an editor. Past mastheads have listed different editors at the four titles, but the closure announcement is signed only as a group.
It does not say whether the pause is voluntary or financially forced. It does not say whether Highway 29 Publishing is in receivership or a managed wind-down. It does not say whether any of the four titles are for sale, or what becomes of back issues, photographs and digital archives.
It also does not address public-notice advertising. Cities and counties contract with adjudicated newspapers to publish required legal notices, and the loss of four such papers raises questions about where Napa County’s public notices will run after May 22.