The Danville Weekly, a sister paper of the Palo Alto Weekly, will publish its last print edition Oct. 2 and shift its focus entirely online.

“While it saddens us to discontinue the print version, we believe the future of community news is online,” publisher Gina Channell-Allen said in a report posted Thursday. “We look forward to continuing our tradition of quality journalism, just delivering it via a different medium. And we are excited about introducing new features that help build a stronger and more interactive community.”

The new features include an e-mail that will be sent to readers five days a week with links to local news stories.

In January, Bill Johnson, the head of Embarcadero Media which owns the Danville paper and other weeklies in the Bay Area, predicted that the papers in his chain might drop their print editions and only appear online in four or five years. Embarcadero Media papers include the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac (Menlo Park), Mountain View Voice, Pleasanton Weekly, Danville Weekly and Pacific Sun (San Rafael).

“With the cost and environmental impact of printing and mailing a newspaper continuing to rise, we have been planning for the day when we felt an online alternative could more efficiently fill the same needs in the community as a newspaper,” said Channell-Allen, the Danville publisher. “Unfortunately, the dismal economy has accelerated these plans.”