Faced with the mandated closure of virtually all local businesses and the resulting advertising cancellations, the Mountain View Voice will suspend publishing its print edition starting next week, Embarcadero Media president Bill Johnson announced Wednesday.

The suspension will continue until the coronavirus crisis has been brought under control, businesses reopen and consumer activity resumes.

In the meantime, the Voice will continue and expand its extensive online reporting as the only news organization devoted to local news coverage of the community. With monthly unique visitors now exceeding 300,000 and 10,000 receiving Express, our free daily news digest email, Mountain View Online is the primary source of local news on the virus crisis and all other local issues for residents.

"As an advertising-dependent business, It is simply not viable to continue absorbing the high costs of printing and mailing newspapers in this environment," Johnson said. "Our hope is that readers and major community institutions will recognize the important role we play in Mountain View and step up to help stabilize the Voice through subscriptions and institutional memberships."

The Voice and its editorial staff have been honored repeatedly with statewide awards for in-depth reporting and local news coverage of city issues and the schools. It has received first place in general excellence three times in the last four years.

"Our ability to weather the COVID-19 crisis and the associated economic impacts depends on thousands more readers becoming subscribing members. That will help us shift our revenue model from one dependent on struggling small businesses to one that relies on readers each contributing a modest amount of as little as $5 per month," Johnson said.

Readers can sign up to support the Voice at mv-voice.com/subscribe.