Stop the presses: Seattle Post-Intelligencer to publish on web only

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a newspaper that dates back to the city's frontier days, will issue its final print edition Tuesday and move entirely to publishing online, owner Hearst Corp. announced Monday.

The online version of the 146-year-old Post-Intelligencer will be "an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information website at its core," said Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers.

In February, the Post-Intelligencer website received about 1.8 million unique visitors and had 50 million page views, according to Nielson Online. However, the paper's print circulation was at 117,000 — down from nearly 200,000 in 1998.

The Post-Intelligencer's move to a web-only version is considered the first for a large American newspaper. It also leaves Seattle with only one mainstream daily, rival paper The Seattle Times.

"A daily newspaper tells the stories of a community and lets the people of a city know who they are, who their neighbors are, and the life and issues they share," said Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist David Horsey, whose work will continue being featured in the online Post-Intelligencer (as well as in other Hearst papers).

"When you lose any one newspaper, you lose a piece of that," he said.

Declining advertising revenue has plagued the newspaper industry for years, but the recent recession has exacerbated the problem, with newspapers and media companies across the U.S. and Canada making significant layoffs, at risk of shuttering or simply closing down completely.

While some popular features, columnists and commentators — like Horsey — from the Post-Intelligencer's print version will continue to be featured online, it's expected that the paper's staff of approximately 180 workers will be drastically cut in the move to web only.

Hearst had put the paper up for sale in January, but said Monday it had failed to find a buyer.

With files from the Associated Press