It will take a while for the surviving media pundits in downtown Los Angeles to notice … but the last serious player in Inland Empire sports journalism — and one of the final 3-4 in the entire Greater L.A. market — has given up its claim of “major league” status in the past 24 hours.

That would be the Riverside Press Enterprise, which as recently as two days ago covered nearly all the major beats in downtown Los Angeles. And traveled with most of them to away games, at not-inconsiderable expense.

And now is in full retreat after firing several of its major beat reporters Thursday.

This is a significant SoCal sports journalism story.

Word is trickling out very slowly from Riverside. We know people have been fired. But the names of those dismissed are leaking out. I got them only after multiple conversations today.

Six have been fired in sports. This is what I have, and please correct me if I’m wrong.

Dan Alegria, designer

Tim Dutton, assistant sports editor

Diamond Leung, Dodgers writer

Kevin Pearson, UCLA writer

Jason Vrtis, copy editor

Dan Weber, USC writer

My condolences to all of them. I hired one of them, once upon a time, and I worked in the same press boxes with four of the other five. For each of the six, this is a time of wrenching change and (probably) career and personal crisis.

In the larger scheme, these firings represent the PE’s abandonment of most of its downtown L.A. presence. The paper’s USC, UCLA and Dodgers reporters, gone. Apparently not to be replaced.

The PE had been what I liked to call the smallest surviving full-service sports section in the market. Just a decade ago, there were something like 10 sports sections in the market that would give you Dodgers/Angels/Lakers/USC/UCLA coverage and analysis — but also covered their core high school teams JCs and small colleges, as well.

That full-service list now is down to … the Los Angeles Times and sorta, the OC Register and L.A. Daily News. (And all of them are demonstrably weaker and cover less than they did even a year ago,)

Riverside had provided the third or fourth beat reporter on press row, in recent years. And now we have to assume that’s over, given the people/jobs Riverside just whacked.

The Times staffs and travels with every major league team that isn’t hockey.

The Register apparently covers everything except the Dodgers (which it gets from the Daily News) but includes (I believe) the Anaheim Ducks hockey club.

The Daily News (or L.A. News Group) covers USC, UCLA, the Dodgers and Lakers but gets its Angels coverage from the Register.

The PE now is down to covering the Lakers. For the moment. That might end as soon as the unrefundable plane tickets already purchased run out.

The PE’s retreat from Los Angeles might be said to mark the end of an era that spanned about 40 years. A period when suburban newspapers from Long Beach to Ventura to San Bernardino and Riverside each expanded from beyond its parochial, local-local interests and fielded their own big-league beat reporters, generally people promoted from the entry-level high school jobs or hired away from smaller dailies in non-major-league markets.

It was a bracing era, with great competition — with 10, 11 reporters traveling with the Dodgers and generating all sorts of angles to games and different approaches to writing and reporting. But that was when newspapers were making lots of money, and before the Web had taken over the world.

The shakeout began in earnest with MediaNews’ purchase of the Daily News/San Gabriel/Long Beach/Ontario/San Bernardino papers and the chain’s demand that only one reporter from its properties cover any event. That process took only a few years and cut the pressbox print contingent in half.

LANG then purchased the Daily Breeze, and there went another batch of downtown writers. And then the Register began to retrench, Ventura pulled back … and now Riverside has up and left.

And now we are left with sadly depleted press corps.

The Dodgers now are covered regularly by two print reporters, Tony Jackson of the Daily News and Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times.

The Angels are covered by Bill Plunkett of the Register and Mike DiGiovanna of the Times.

USC and UCLA still are covered by the Register, Times and LANG. Only the Times covers the Clippers, at home.  And the Lakers, the Big Dogs of L.A. sports, still have (at the moment) four papers covering them (add the PE) and five full-time reporters (LAT has two committed).

I give Riverside credit for lasting at this downtown game as long as it did. Its sports staff now has been cut almost in half from a high of around 40 full-timers just 4-5 years ago. Included in that group are only nine full-time writers, two of them full-time columnists. Leaving about seven reporters to cover 90-some high schools, an NCAA Division I program (UC Riverside), a D2 program (Cal State San Bernardino) and a variety of JCs. And generating Web-specific content. It’s hard to imagine many shifts will be available for day-to-day coverage of beats involving big-league teams.

A bit on the departed writers:

Dan Weber is one of the brightest and hardest-working beat guys in the market. A veteran and a pro. I ranked him in my “top 10 L.A. market sports journalists” list about a year ago. I’ve told colleagues that I have never sat next to a writer who can break down a football game, as it is unfolding, with the skill and incisiveness that Dan Weber did. I liked listening to his play-by-play asides because they made me recognize what I otherwise would not have noticed. (And I previously thought I knew football.)

Diamond Leung turned into a force on the Dodgers beat in, like, three seasons. He was out front on any given development, and not far behind on any of them. His firing is curious, because he was perceived to be a rising star, young and energetic, eager to turn his attention to the Web. His recall from spring training, on Wednesday, and ouster, on Thursday, to me is the clearest indication that the three repertorial firings are about retrenchment, not competence.

Kevin Pearson loved covering UCLA and made grueling daily trips to Westwood from Riverside County to see practices and stay current. He took his job seriously and has good reason to wonder why he’s out of the business today. A year ago, he looked like another youngish guy still on his way up.

The PE was unique in that it was the last of the suburbans to cling — fight, actually — to keep up its commitment to its own L.A. coverage. (And even a modicum of San Diego coverage, as well, with the Chargers and Padres.) It operated without allies, it often did things on the cheap, but it kept showing the flag well into the print implosion and even the economic downturn. That is a credit to a well-managed staff and an upper management commitment to being competitive.

It may not be noticed immediately, but there will be more empty seats in the press box, and another set of voices has been silenced. This is not good, because it is the print reporters who keep an eye on the daily comings and goings of a beat, who break the big stories and, often, the little stories that turn into big stories. TV and radio folks don’t pay attention to the details; their mediums don’t really allow it. The loss of every print reporter is a loss for the whole market, and now we’re down to such small numbers that stories might go missed entirely if the couple of guys left on the beat are distracted or exhausted or are having a bad day.

The Press Enterprise, after decades of a steady march toward big-league acceptance, overnight has returned to the ranks of the little guys, and that is as bad for SoCal journalism as it is difficult for the people and the sports section involved.

Perhaps Riverside returns to L.A., “once this crisis is over.” Maybe. Right now, all these pullbacks have the feel of permanence.  I expect futher retreat (by the Register and LANG) before this thing heads in a felicitous direction.

Perhaps some sort of online entities will rise up and give us more daily voices on the beat, people who actually are on the scene and not just vamping off the reportage of others. Maybe.

Good luck to us all.