The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city's oldest newspaper, will roll off the presses for the last time tomorrow, its owner said today.
The Hearst Corporation also said on the P-I's website that it will keep the online version of the P-I alive, a decision that began to leak out earlier this month when some current P-I news staffers were offered jobs with the new internet venture.
Additional details were not immediately available.
The vast majority of the P-I's 167 employees, almost all in news, are expected to lose their jobs. The online enterprise will have a significantly smaller news staff.
The demise of the print P-I had been widely anticipated since 9 January, when Hearst executives said they would put the paper up for sale for 60 days. If no buyer emerged, they said, the print P-I would be shut down.
Finding a buyer always was considered a long shot. Newspapers across the US are reeling as advertising revenue plummets, buffeted by twin typhoons: the recession, and reader and advertiser migration to the internet.
Some daily newspapers have closed. Other owners have filed for bankruptcy protection. Almost all have cut costs, trimming staff through buyouts and layoffs.
Papers up for sale that are healthier than the P-I aren't attracting buyers. One of them, Denver's Rocky Mountain News, stopped publishing last month.
The P-I traces its roots to 1863. Hearst bought it in 1921. When Hearst put the P-I up for sale, Chief Executive Frank Bennack and newspaper division President Steven Swartz said the paper had not made money since 2000.
"We see no opportunity for us to publish the P-I on a profitable basis," the executives said in a letter to P-I employees.
They said the P-I had lost $14m in 2008 and stood to lose more this year.
Those losses came despite a joint operating agreement between the P-I and The Seattle Times, approved by the US justice department in 1983, that allowed the two papers to consolidate some operations to reduce costs.
Under the JOA the Times and P-I maintain separate newsrooms while the larger Times handles advertising, circulation, production and other business functions for both papers. In return, the Times has received 60% and Hearst 40% of whatever revenue is left after the Times is compensated for the papers' combined non-news expenses.
Since the Times switched from afternoon to morning publication in 2000 to compete head-to-head with the P-I, the P-I's weekday circulation has dropped from nearly 200,000 to about 117,000. The Times' circulation has slid less dramatically, to about 198,000.
The Times also is in financial trouble. Its executives have said that, while the P-I's demise increases the Times prospects for survival long-term, in the short run it will hurt the Times economically.
In addition to the P-I, Hearst owns 15 daily newspapers, 29 television stations, two radio stations, more than two dozen US magazines and a large portfolio of cable and online investments.
It is a privately held company that does not disclose its finances, but has indicated its newspapers, like others, face financial difficulties.
Last month Hearst said it would sell or close its money-losing San Francisco Chronicle if costs can't be cut quickly.
The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (P-I), the 146-year-old Seattle newspaper, will make its final print edition on today, before becoming an online-only news agency.

However, the online version is to be for local news only. The editorial staff would consist of twenty people, less than one-seventh of the 150 staff that were employed before the closure.

With this closure, the ''Seattle Times'' is now Seattle's only major daily newspaper.

"We don't feel like we have to cover everything ourselves. We'll partner for some content; we won't duplicate what the wire is reporting unless we have something unique to offer; we'll continue to showcase the great content from our 150 or so reader bloggers and we'll link to content partners and competitors to create the best mix of news on our front page," said Michelle Nicolosi, who is to be the executive producer of the online paper.

The Hearst Corporation, the owner of the P-I, was not able to find a buyer for the newspaper when it was put up for sale back in January.

The newspaper industry in the country has been suffering as revenue from advertising plunges. Other newspapers in the United States have also shut down recently: Denver's ''Rocky Mountain News'' shut down earlier this year, whilst the ''Tucson Citizen'' of Arizona will print its final edition on Saturday.