Daily news experiments with reader-written journalism.

The Daily News of Los Angeles is launching four community news supplements in early October using articles and photographs submitted by readers, part of a growing national trend toward reader-produced "citizen journalism."

The San Fernando Valley-based newspaper's weekly Valley News sections

It's one of the latest efforts by newspapers to attract readership without investing large sums of money at a time when the Internet, cable television and other new media are siphoning away readers.

"It will be a quick read, an easy read, lots of the same elements we have at the Daily News, but it will have its own identity as well," said Tracy Rafter, the paper's publisher. "It's really their (the readers') paper. It's what they decide to submit and generate."

Owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc., the Daily News publishes a main Valley edition, a Glendale/Burbank edition and staff-written local sections for eastern Ventura County, Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley.

The Valley News will get even more local. Each edition will cover about a quarter of the Valley, with the San Diego (405) Freeway the east-west dividing line and Roscoe Boulevard north-south dividing line.

For the Daily News that represents somewhat of a return to its focus in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it maintained a larger news staff in the Valley and surrounding areas before financial pressures caused it to cut back its local coverage.

Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said reader-produced local news supplements and Web sites may begin to replace local sections produced by a paper's own journalists, which are expensive to produce.

"It's really hard to have the staff to cover neighborhood news with the profit pressures newspapers are under," Outing said. "If they can sell these zoned editions and get some advertisers that can't afford to get into the main edition, it could be profitable."

Parent company

Since April, MediaNews has participated in a citizen journalism experiment in its home market of Denver, where its Denver Post competes editorially with the Rocky Mountain News but the two papers collaborate on business matters under a joint operating agreement.