China's largest press group will shut down one of its newspapers next year, in the first significant move of the group in press industry reconstruction, Shanghai-based eastday.com reported on Monday.

Shanghai United Media Group will stop the publication of the Shanghai Evening Post, a daily newspaper, from January 1, 2014, an insider from the newspaper said.

The newspaper, founded in 1999, is the first to be closed by the news group after the merger between Shanghai Jiefang Daily Group and Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group on October 28.

Zhang Zhi'an, an associate professor at the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat-sen University, reposted the news and wrote on his Weibo account on Monday that the press industry should introduce exit mechanisms and industrial structural adjustment which are crucial to media development.