The Los Angeles Times ceased publication of its innovative and artfully written "Outdoors" section in December. A Times article said shutting down the weekly section was "a cost-cutting measure" in response to "higher newsprint costs, flat revenue, competition from the Internet, and other pressures common to many newspapers."

Launched in September 2003, "Outdoors" was described admiringly by the online travel magazine World Hum as "a sort of Outside magazine for Southern California." Besides tips about recreation opportunities in the region, "Outdoors" provided other material including environmental reporting in a style often called literary journalism.

"Outdoors" ranged in size from 16 pages for special editions to eight pages at the end of its run in December, when the staff box included eight names. Freelancers also contributed.

In the Times article announcing the decision to drop "Outdoors", Times editor Dean Bacquet called it "one of the most inventive sections in any major newspaper," and said financial considerations were the sole reason.

Without attribution, the article said the section had "failed to attract advertisers" and that "readership surveys indicated that only about 28 percent of Times readers perused 'Outdoors' regularly."

Times associate editor John Montorio said in the same article that managers hoped to save the jobs of "Outdoors" staff members.

On Nov. 15, the day the decision to shut down the section was announced in the Times, "Outdoors" published a package of stories on noise pollution. It included a long, lyrically written profile of an "acoustic ecologist," a summary of noise problems at selected national parks, and a guide for opportunities to hike in relative quiet in the Los Angeles area.

In a farewell column in the last issue of "Outdoors" on Dec. 6, section editor Thomas Curwen described what he and his colleagues had worked to provide:

"Whether you hiked, fished, surfed or skied, 'Outdoors' was a portrait of magnificent obsession, an exhortation -- at times with a nudge, at other times with an open-palmed shove –- to see and appreciate everything that surrounds us."

Another article in the Dec. 6 issue offered accounts of five often-constroversial sites where, "thanks to the single-minded dedication of conservation groups, land trusts, conservancies, private companies and government organizations, forgotten canyons are becoming nature preserves, oil lands are returning to wetlands, and parklands are expanding into larger wildlife sanctuaries."

Also in the final issue of "Outdoors," author Gretel Ehrlich observed in an essay that "to live fully in the world as it is should be our common aspiration, not to dominate and improve but to be co-residents."

A week after the last issue of "Outdoors" was published, the Times announced it would also stop publishing its national edition, which an article in The New York Times said "had been an endangered species for years."