According to a report in today’s Australian, the Telstra-owned newspaper could be shut down as early as October after 40 years in print.

The publication has struggled in the face of online competition, with Telstra taking a $110 million write-down on the Trading Post group in 2007 due to weak print sales. Telstra’s directories division Sensis paid $636 million for the Trading Post group of 22 print publications and five websites in March 2004.

Telstra appear to have already laid the groundwork for the move to an online-only model, with Trading Post operations being shifted to Telstra’s online unit BigPond in March this year, before closing the Trading Post print classified call centre in Sydney and shedding a further 150 Sensis staff in April, blaming a large drop in print classified sales.

According to the report, the Trading Post newspaper averages 469,000 readers a week and the website 1.8 million unique browsers a month.

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