DENVER -- MediaNews Group, who owns the Denver Post and 53 other daily newspapers, plans to stop providing free online access to all its newspaper content on its Web sites.

According to the Denver Business Journal, MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton wrote a memo to employees saying, "We cannot continue to give all our content away for free."

The MediaNews memo said, "We continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free. Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business -- the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis."

The memo represents the latest trend among newspapers who are struggling with an unprecedented advertising and circulation declines that some have said will lead to the demise of the industry.

MediaNews did not give a date when they will begin to charge for content. The company said it will "build a strategic plan that places a value on our content, protects our core print business, extends the reach of our audience, and creates new revenue opportunities online."

The MediaNews announcement comes less than a month after an online venture by former writers of the Rocky Mountain News created an online paid-only site called InDenverTimes.com.

Kevin Preblud, one of the original investors behind InDenverTimes.com, said the site attracted just 3,000 paying subscribers, well short of the 50,000-subscriber goal. That's only 6 percent of its stated goal.

"Obviously, the economic climate is very difficult for the media and all types of investments right now," said David Milstead, one of the former News staffers who was contributing work to InDenverTimes.com.

The Rocky Mountain News closed Feb. 27, just short of it's 150th birthday.

The MediaNews memo was reprinted by the Poynter Institute’s Jim Romenesko in his online column and by the trade journal Editor & Publisher on its Web site.