TUCSON, Ariz. - Arizona's oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the Tucson Citizen, will publish its final print edition Saturday but will continue operating as an online opinion site.

Kate Marymont, Gannett Co. vice president for news, told the newspaper's staff Friday that the Citizen will continue with a Web edition providing commentary and opinion, but no news or sports coverage.

The joint operating agreement (JOA) Gannett has with Lee Enterprises Inc., which publishes the morning Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, will end Saturday. The companies' business partnership, Tucson Newspapers Inc., will continue outside of the legal framework of a JOA, Marymont said.

Under the JOA, Lee and Gannett shared costs and profits, with Tucson Newspapers Inc., handling all non-editorial functions, from advertising to circulation.

Bob Dickey, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing Division, said in a statement that TNI will print a Tucson Citizen editorial weekly in the Star to expand the reach of the Citizen's voice.

"Dramatic changes in our industry combined with the difficult economy - particularly in this region - means it is no longer viable to produce two daily printed newspapers in Tucson," Dickey said.

The final issue of the Citizen will be a 40-page commemorative edition, editor Jennifer Boice said.

"I'm really sorry to see it go," Boice said. "We served a function in this community, we made other news media better.

She said the Citizen's talented writers, reporters and editors produced a competitive newspaper, and the paper's absence "will leave a hole in this community, and it will be a bigger hole than our circulation indicates."

The Citizen, an afternoon newspaper, becomes the latest casualty of a newspaper industry struggling to survive despite the economy, dwindling advertising revenues and Internet competition. The battle has been especially tough in two-newspaper towns like Tucson.

Already this year, E.W. Scripps Co. closed the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and Hearst Corp. stopped printing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, making it a news online site. The Christian Science Monitor stopped daily publication in favor of a weekly print edition with daily online news.

On Thursday, the Ann Arbor News in Michigan said its last day of publication will be July 23.

Other major newspaper companies, including the owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, have filed for bankruptcy protection.

Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, announced in January that it would close the Citizen if it didn't find a buyer for certain assets by March 21.

Four days before the planned closing, Gannett announced the Citizen would remain open while it negotiated with two interested buyers. Those talks ultimately proved unsuccessful.

"In the end, there were no buyers," Marymont told the Citizen staff.

She said Gannett would honor severance pay arrangements that had been announced in January after the initial closure announcement. It was unclear how many of the Citizen's 65 employees would lose their jobs.

The Citizen has struggled for years against the Star, a 117,000-circulation newspaper. During the Citizen's heyday in the 1960s, circulation was about 60,000, but it had fallen to 17,000.

"It's been a great ride," said sportswriter Steve Rivera, who was with the Citizen for nearly 22 years. "I've had a great time doing the only thing I've ever wanted to do in my life."

Sheryl Kornman, a reporter who spent eight years with the Citizen starting in 1970 and returned almost 10 years ago, was in tears.

"I didn't think it would hit me this way," she said. "It seems so tragic. I knew this would probably happen this way and was totally not prepared."

The Arizona Citizen was founded on Oct. 15, 1870, by John Wasson, a newspaper man from California, with behind-the-scenes help from Richard McCormick, the territory's governor and later territorial delegate to Congress.

The paper changed ownership several times over the next 100 years until Gannett bought it in 1976, just a few years after a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Citizen led Congress to pass the Newspaper Preservation Act and new rules for joint operating agreements for competing newspapers doing business together. Gannett also changed the name to the Tucson Citizen.

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