The Argus Champion, a weekly newspaper that has covered the greater Lake Sunapee area since 1823, will stop publication at the end of this month, according to this morning's edition.

In a letter to readers, Publisher Harvey Hill said the newspaper has been losing money each month.

"We are truly sorry to have to make this announcement," Hill wrote. "We feel a heavy burden, shutting down a newspaper that has been in existence for 185 years."

Hill said regular subscribers will receive a letter explaining their options for prepaid subscriptions. He did not return several messages left at his home and office.

News of the closing started to spread yesterday when editor Jana Marx notified paid local columnists by e-mail. She asked them to collect stories about Argus history for the final edition, which will run two weeks from today.

Early this month, before the decision to close was announced, the Monitor hired Marx, who has been the Argus's editor since 2006. She declined to comment for this story.

"We here at the office are all taking this pretty hard; we've worked really hard on this paper and I think it's at its best place right now," Marx wrote in the e-mail.

She went on to say that she hoped someone would come forward to buy the newspaper. She encouraged people to write to Hill to tell him what they think of the decision to close.

The Argus has a circulation of about 4,500. It is one of the oldest weekly newspapers in New Hampshire, according to the website for its parent company, Twin State Valley Media Network. The company also publishes several New Hampshire and Vermont publications, including the Connecticut Valley Spectator, the Eagle Times, the Weekly Flea and the Message for the Week. It sold Hillsboro's weekly, The Villager, last year.

The Argus covers the towns of Andover, Bradford, Croydon, Goshen, Grantham, Lempster, Newbury, New London, Newport, Springfield, Sutton, Sunapee, Unity, Warner and Wilmot.

Jim Lantz, a longtime supporter of the Argus, said he was shocked.

The Argus "has carried the news of the community," said Lantz, who owns MJ Harrington & Co. Jewelers in Newport. "It's been a reliable source."

Sutton columnist Christine Nelson said she was disappointed the newspaper was closing. Nelson raises monarch butterflies and was looking forward to writing a column about them in August.

"I just feel bad that it's (closing at) the end of the month," she said. "That's just too quick to wrap up everything."

Joan Lamson estimated that she has been a columnist for New London for about 20 years. She hadn't received the e-mail from Marx, but she had heard the news from a relative who heard it downtown.

"I can't believe it," she said. "I'm dumbfounded."

She said Ed DeCourcy, who was editor for 21 years before retiring in 1982 and who died in 2005, would be upset.

"He wouldn't believe it," she said. "It just seems like this is the kind of paper that would go on in perpetuity."

In his letter to readers, Hill highlights several newspapers across the country - the Albuquerque Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Miami Herald - that have closed, reported large losses or laid off employees. But the Argus is different from those newspapers in that it is focused wholly on local news. Media experts have said locally focused papers have a better chance of surviving in trying financial times.

Hill wrote that, by Jan. 1, newsprint costs will have increased 49 percent in 13 months. He said readers and advertisers are continually moving to the internet.