With rival weekend daily off the streets since April, Singapore Press Holdings is cutting the weekend edition of its The New Paper.

Closure of the weekend and weekday Mediacorp title Today - the latter at the end of September - coincided with an agreement to buy back the 40 per cent interest held by SPH since 2005. Free stablemate My Paper had been folded into The New Paper 18 months previously.

This weekend will see the last weekend edition of The New Paper, with the decline in print advertising blamed. Editor Eugene Wee says a large percentage of readers work five-day weeks, and Saturday travel patterns are getting more varied.

"Hence, we have decided to focus our resources on weekdays to give our readers the best of news and lifestyle stories."

SPH is also merging teams from its Chinese Media Group - comprising Lianhe Zaobao, Lianhe Wanbao and CMG Digital - into a new newsroom.