The unprecedented media downturn in the US has claimed yet another casualty – the venerable Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city's oldest newspaper, has downed shutters on its print edition. From today, it will be the largest daily newspaper in the US to shift to an entirely digital news product only be available on the internet.

Hearst Corp, which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said yesterday that it had failed to find a buyer for the paper. The development was widely expected since 9 January, when Hearst executives said they would put the paper up for sale for 60 days. However, no buyer has emerged during this period. (See: Hearst looking for buyer for Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper)

"Tonight will be the final run, so let's do it right," publisher Roger Oglesby is reported to have told the newsroom. The front page of the final edition featured a headline saying 'You've meant the world to us' and a photo of the 30-foot neon globe atop the P-I's building, which has a slogan rotating around the equator saying, 'It's in the P-I'.

Steven R Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said the online P-I would not just be "a newspaper online – ''It's an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information Website at its core."

Hearst said the online edition will include some of the newspaper's well-known contributors. However, the vast majority of the P-I's 167 employees, almost all in the news department, are expected to lose their jobs. The online enterprise will have a significantly smaller news staff.
The P-I had 181 employees, but managing editor David McCumber told Reuters that the Website would only employ about 20 in the newsroom operations and another 20 to sell ads. He said he would not be working on the new site.

Hearst's move to end the print edition leaves the P-I's larger rival, The Seattle Times, as the only mainstream daily in the city. The Times plans to deliver a copy of the newspaper to every P-I subscriber on Wednesday morning, spokeswoman Jill Mackie said.

Four newspaper companies, including the owners of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in recent months.

In Arizona, Gannett Co's Tucson Citizen is set to close on Saturday, leaving one newspaper in that city. And last month Hearst said it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the newspaper couldn't slash expenses in coming weeks.

The P-I's roots date to 1863, when Seattle was still a frontier town and James Watson founded its precursor, the Seattle Gazette, as a four-page weekly.

The newspaper changed hands, names and offices several times - including when the 1889 great Seattle fire destroyed its office - before newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst bought it as the P-I in 1921 through a representative. Hearst later revealed his ownership of the newspaper in an editorial.