After being unable to find a buyer for several months, the Baltimore Examiner will close following its last issue, which is set to be distributed Feb. 15. The newspaper's Web site will also be closed then, The Baltimore Sun reported Thursday.

The Examiner is a free paper delivered to homes and distributed from boxes and hawkers on street corners. Launched by Denver-based Clarity Media Group Inc. in 2006, executives had hoped the Examiner would profit from advertising packaged with the Washington Examiner.

However, those revenues "didn't materialise to the level that was in our projections," partly due to the poor economic environment, Jim Monaghan, a spokesman for Clarity, told The Sun.

Originally, the paper's owner planned to deliver the paper to affluent Baltimore homes six days a week; however, home delivery was reduced to just two days a week in Baltimore, Howard, Hartford, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties, while the number of papers printed was decreased by 80 percent, to 256,000 on Thursdays, 335,000 on Sunday and 50,000 on other days, The Sun reported.

Clarity plans to continue building up its newspapers in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.