Monday, 5.30pm, and into my inbox - and  hundreds of other journalists’ - pops the self-explanatory mail from Mark Law pasted below. As always, Mark is the perfect gent, as civilised in his writing as in life. So we must read between the lines to predict what will become of the site that he edited so elegantly.

In its day, www.thefirstpost.co.uk was a real trailblazer, praised by The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown, among many others. At one point, it looked like it might even break even - but come the recession, the backing ran out. At that point, it might have gone down in style - had not the publisher Felix Dennis rescued it. However, once Dennis’s bean-counters started pecking away (and of course, they had to) the site began to struggle somewhat.

As Dennis also publishes that excellent magazine The Week, ever since the takeover, there has been talk of the ’synergy between the two platforms’ - and I suspect The First Post will in some way be subsumed into its staple-bound cousin. But how? The current thinking about online publications with offline equivalents is that they will become ‘community’ sites, offering money-off deals and freebies to print readers. If that’s The First Post’s fate, so be it. But let us not forget its glory days.

And now, here’s that mail. Hope you enjoy Mark’s little joke at the end. It always made new contributors chuckle….

Dear All,

I am leaving The First Post at the end of August.

The site is being redesigned and relaunched this autumn and, as part of a restructuring, I will be leaving the editorship after four and a half years.

Following my departure from The Sunday Telegraph, I was asked to devise a daily online news and opinion magazine by Martin Finegold and a group of investors in the spring of 2005. The First Post went online in the early hours of August 11.

Our original articles by well-established professional journalists which combined intelligence with brevity. Our innovative and luxurious design and our dramatic use of the best photography soon attracted attention. The site achieved a readership of 1.3 million unique visitors a month. In 2007 The First Post was nominated for the Consumer Editorial Team of the Year Award 2007 by the Association of Online Publishers.

Most of you who receive this note have, to a greater or lesser extent, played a part in the success of The First Post and I want to thank you for all you have done – particularly those who came on board in our  early days when we were an unknown quantity. I have enjoyed working with some wonderfully talented journalists as well as people from the fields of graphic and web design, marketing and advertising; I have had the pleasure of collaborating with a delightful production team in the office. And all has been made possible by two supportive proprietors.

My immediate plan is to go to Rotterdam next week for the five-day World Judo Championships. The Pyjama Game, A Journey into Judo, which has been described as “riveting”, “hilarious” and “horrifying”, won the Best New Sportswriter award in 2008. So I am now writing a sequel which also interweaves memoir and history with behind-the-scenes reporting of the international tournament circuit; it will set the scene for the sport at the London Olympics. I also have to promote Falling Hard, the American edition of The Pyjama Game, which was published in the US last month.

Maybe some of our paths will cross again – I hope so. Meanwhile, I hope you will join me in wishing The First Post every success in its new form.

Finally, to all of you who have contributed in your many different ways, I send my heartfelt thanks.

My best wishes,

Mark (aka mrak)