The Alabama-based company that owns four local news weeklies in south King County is combining them into a single new paper — the South King Reporter — and layoffs of reporters and staff are likely to follow.

The merger, announced earlier this month by the Carpenter Media Group, means King County is losing a fifth of its printed local papers — the Auburn Reporter, Federal Way Mirror, Kent Reporter, and Renton Reporter.

The new South King Reporter publishes its first edition Friday, Nov. 6.

Experts say the merger is bad news, not just for the papers’ employees but for all area residents.

“ What The Seattle Times can cover largely affects Seattle. For me here in Tacoma, sometimes that’s useful, a lot of times it’s not, right?,” said Randy Nichols, a communications professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, who studies the media industry. “When we’re talking about local community papers, having a local community paper in Renton or in Federal Way is going to give you information that helps you locally.”