MediaFile

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, after today, will be an online only paper, the latest casualty in the beleaguered newspaper business. 

The news is no better for papers in Tacoma, Boise and elsewhere. 

Keep an eye on:

Walt Disney Co. has put the long-delayed expansion of its Hong Kong theme park on hold after failing to agree with the city’s government on a cash infusion (Reuters) U.S. retail sales of Apple Inc’s Mac computers fell 16 percent in February on a unit basis, even as low-cost netbooks helped Windows-based PCs sales rise 22 percent (Reuters)

EW Scripps Co’s decision to shut down Denver’s Rocky Mountain News as of Friday offers an interesting lesson about the value of news.

But first, a bit of background: It is not the first U.S. daily to fail as the economy falters. Scripps already put down two other papers in recent memory (Albuquerque, New Mexico and Cincinnati, Ohio, its home town). Having said that, it’s the biggest daily that I can think of to go under since the newspaper apocalypse crept in like Death in the Bosch painting. Not just bankrupt like Tribune’s papers, the Minneapolis Star Tribune or The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and the whole Journal Register stable — and not just threatened with closing like Hearst has done with the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It’s really over.

When it goes, William Dean Singleton’s Denver-based MediaNews Group will still publish the Denver Post. Still, half the printed news that Colorado residents have been used to reading will be gone.