Dominican weekly Clave and its online version Clave Digital yesterday ran their last editions due to financial problems, El Mundo revealed.

"With highs and low, we have made a serious journalism, responsible and interested in contributing to democracy. We went beyond where traditional newspapers have gone," editor-in-chief Fausto Rosario Adames said in an article, while explaining that the economic crisis affected the financial capacity of Media Team Dominicana, owner of the publications.

However, the local press attributed the closure to threats received by Rosario Adames because of the newspaper constant reports on police corruption, the Dominican Today informed.

It is believed that the editor-in-chief was the real target of an attack on Tuesday morning, in which four gunmen killed a doctor. Now, the publisher is under special police security at the request of Dominican President Leonel Fernandez.

Clave launched its website in 2005 and a year later started publishing its weekly print edition. Overall, the company had 102 employees, according to Prnoticias.

The first annual World Newspaper Future & Change Study is a global research study about newspaper publishers' business strategies moving forward for the next five years, with the key objective to inspire newspaper executives to invest and innovate their business units and business practices, the latest SFN's report, Charting the Course for Newspapers, reported.

The purpose of the study is to pinpoint the business and strategic challenges of the world's newspapers, and then to identify the publishers' strategies moving forward to turn the challenges into opportunities.

According to the study, overall revenue has indeed suffered at newspapers around the world, with declines in revenue outpacing increases.

Globally, 38 percent of the respondents said their companies suffered at least a 20 percent blow to revenues in the past year, followed by 25.6 percent of the respondents reporting an 11 percent to 20 percent decline, and 24.1 percent reporting a one to 10 percent decline. Just over 12 percent of the respondents reported no change or slight increases in the past year.