Seattle P-I publishes last print edition

SEATTLE (CNN) -- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city's oldest daily newspaper, published its last print edition Tuesday, moving the paper's entire operation online.

The Hearst Corporation announced the cost-cutting measure Monday.

"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time. But the bloodline will live on," Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom in Seattle on Monday morning, according to its Web site.

A short time later, Oglesby told reporters in the lobby of the newspaper that about 140 staffers had received severance packages, and that 20 to 25 others would remain.

Columnist Mike Lewis told CNN over the weekend that he was not among those who was asked last week to stay.

"The mood has been lousy in the newsroom," said the 20-year P-I employee. "It's one thing to lose your job; it's another thing to lose a group of friends who you have worked with very closely for a long period of time, and it's still another to lose an institution that's mattered in Seattle since the Civil War."

The newspaper -- the oldest business in Seattle -- said delivery would be halted to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

The company said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

New York-based Hearst put the Seattle P-I up for sale in early January, saying that the paper would stop printing if no buyer were found within 60 days.

"Despite community concern, no buyer emerged," the paper later said, adding that it lost $14 million last year.

The newspaper is the latest to take drastic steps in the face of declining readership and advertising revenue.

Last month, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver published its final edition after nearly 150 years.

The dramatic decline in advertising dollars has led some newspapers to cut costs by firing cartoonists, columnists and others, leaving many searching for jobs in a struggling industry.

The News' closure left Denver - like most American cities - with one daily newspaper, the Denver Post.

That will now be the case with Seattle, where daily newspaper readers will have only the P-I's rival and business partner, The Seattle Times.