Two months after Seattle Post-Intelligencer's parent company Hearst Corp announced that the daily newspaper, marred by losses, will be shut if it could not fetch a buyer, the late Monday and early Tuesday print edition of the paper will be the last ones.

With the closing down of P-I, Hearst will focus entirely on its digital operations - operating an online only news enterprise in Seattle.

About the P-I shut down move, the Hearst group president, Steven Swartz, said: "This is an effort by Hearst to build a local digital media business in Seattle. At its core is a great website that today gets traffic far out of proportion with its circulation levels."

In an attempt to enhance its Seattlepi. com website operations, P-I intends undertaking measures like - launching new blogs from well-known area residents; initiating 150 blogs written by readers; and setting up a local digital advertising agency.

According to Nielson data, the P-I site - which has shifted from the Times-operated domain to its own web domain - already attracts nearly 1.8 million unique monthly visitors, though in-house studies put the figures at almost 4 million. In comparison, the print edition of the newspaper had an average 117,600 weekday circulation.

So far as the 170-odd P-I staffers are concerned, some have lost their jobs, while others will continue with the new P-I website.