HONG KONG, Oct 28: Respected Asian news weekly The Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) is to publish its final edition this weekend after being sunk by poor sales, publishers announced on Thursday.

Eighty jobs will be lost as the 58-year-old magazine, published by Dow Jones and the region's last major English-language news weekly, is turned into a monthly.

The new magazine will bear the same title but have a much smaller circulation and will concentrate chiefly on opinion pieces about politics, business and economics rather than news.

The closure of the weekly comes just two years after the only other major regional news magazine of its kind, Asiaweek, also folded because of poor sales and advertising.

It also marks the end of more than half-a-century of award-winning news journalism by the magazine, including Nate Thayer's interview with former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot in 1997.

Dow Jones Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Kann told staff in a statement the Far Eastern Economic Review had been making losses for the past six years.

"I believe the era of regional news weeklies, even excellent ones like the Review, is nearing an end given the many other available sources of daily and more frequent news and analysis," he said.-dpa