US newspaper which printed blogs folds after six months

In the latest failure to strike the US media market, a startup which aimed to revitalize and revolutionize the newspaper by reprinting blogs folded on Tuesday.

The Printed Blog -- hyper-localized free papers that offered businesses the same kind of targeted and cheap ads found online -- hit the streets of Chicago and San Francisco in late January.

It ceased publication "due to a lack of outside investment capital," founder Joshua Karp wrote in the publication's blog.

"This was a difficult decision for us, but the financial reality of the situation demanded that we suspend further publication immediately, and indefinitely," Karp wrote.

"Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience, and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media."

Chicago-based Printed Blog published 16 issues and distributed 80,000 copies in its six months of operations, Karp said. Another 100,000 issues were downloaded in that time.

(c) 2009 AFP