Washington Post to shut remaining three US bureaus

In a cost cutting move, the Washington Post said yesterday that is closing its remaining three US news bureaus outside of the Washington, D.C. area and will cover national news from its base in Washington.

The six reporters who work in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago will be offered a relocation to Washington, while three news assistants will lose their jobs.

The  Washington Post, which was first published in 1877 and where, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is also a substantial shareholder said, ''The money-saving move, coming on the heels of four rounds of early-retirement buyouts and the closing or merging of several sections, is the clearest sign yet of the newspaper's shrinking horizons in an era of diminished resources.''

"It's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," executive editor Marcus Brauchli and other top Post editors said in a memo to staff.

The Post, which has a daily circulation of 673,180 and 890,163 on Sunday, has axed more than 200 jobs through buyout offers earlier this year and after several rounds of earlier buyouts.

The Post had already closed the Austin, Denver and Miami national bureaus in recent years and as like nearly every other newspaper in the US, has been battered by falling advertising revenue and circulation as readers get more news online for free.

It has closed or merged certain sections of the paper to save money and said last month that it will form a news service and team up with financial-information service provider Bloomberg LP to sell articles to other news organisations.