E.W. Scripps said Thursday it expects to announce its plans for the future of the Rocky Mountain News, which lost $16 million in 2008, by March 31.

The Cincinnati-based company made the statement as it released its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday. Scripps said Dec. 4, 2008, that it was putting the Rocky up for sale. It accepted bids through the close of business Jan. 16.

"Some of the very best journalism in the nation has not been enough to rescue a franchise trapped in an unsustainable business model," Scripps CEO Rich Boehne told Wall Street analysts in a conference call. "We're proud of the Rocky's journalistic accomplishments, but we simply cannot absorb unending - and growing - losses."

"We haven't given many updates about our progress on the sale because having so many parties involved makes the process complex, but I believe you'll hear news from us on this before the end of the first quarter, for sure, and not too far out," he said.

Boehne declined to answer an analyst's question about what the cost of shutting the Rocky might be. "We're probably not far enough along to give you an exact number of what it would cost to shut down or exit the market," Boehne said. "One of the reasons for that is it's not clear to us, as we sit here today, which way we might go and what our method of exit might be."

Scripps said newsroom expenses for the Rocky for full-year 2008 were about $16 million higher than its share of profits from the Denver Newspaper Agency, excluding a one-time gain from the sale of the former Denver Post printing plant on Fox Street near the I-25 Mousetrap.

For the fourth quarter, Scripps reported $8.44 million of Denver costs and no income from the agency. Company spokesman Tim King said the Denver costs include newsroom expenses plus a $2.8 million reserve for newsprint "that we shipped to the (agency) in November but have not yet been paid for."

Scripps' revenue decreased 6.2 percent to $265 million, compared with $282 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. Newspaper revenue fell 16.5 percent in the fourth quarter to $137.5 million.

The company reported a fourth-quarter loss from continuing operations before income taxes and minority interests of $19.4 million, compared with a positive $44.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2007.