Cordova turns to posted notices after local newspaper closes

The City of Cordova is moving to foreclose on properties whose owners didn't pay their 2025 taxes, and it has to tell the public. It just doesn't have a printed newspaper to tell them in.

"Because the local newspaper is no longer in circulation," the city announced, it posted the foreclosure notices in four public locations around town, where they will stay for 30 days — the method it says the law requires. The city did not say where the four are.

The newspaper in question has not gone anywhere. The Cordova Times, founded in 1914, printed its final edition on March 27 after 112 years — but it did not close. It moved online, and it is still publishing, still covering the same city hall now tacking notices to walls. "The Cordova Times is not going away," owner and publisher Rachel Kallander wrote in a farewell to print, telling readers the economics of printing had simply become unsustainable.

Kallander grew up in Cordova and bought the paper in 2022, when its previous owner, the Native Village of Eyak, announced it would shut the Times down if no buyer came forward — and offered it away for free. She kept it running, first weekly, then twice a month, then on the web.

Which leaves a gap between what exists and what counts. Cordova has a newspaper. Its readers are online. But for the purpose of warning someone they may lose their property, the city is relying on four walls in a town of 2,300 with no road out.

The city filed its foreclosure petition in Superior Court on July 1. Property owners have until Aug. 31 to answer, and the full list can be examined at the City Clerk's office.