“That is a lie,” Mr. Correa said.

The president said the magazine had serious financial problems. And he accused it of lying to advertisers about its circulation, a fraud he said would have been revealed under a provision in the media law that authorizes the government to carry out circulation audits. He said that the magazine claimed its circulation was around 15,000, but that it was actually below 5,000.

“This is not honest journalism,” Mr. Correa said.

In his regular Saturday television program on June 29, Mr. Correa discussed the magazine’s demise. The magazine’s circulation was so small the owners did not even read it, he said. And while the media law alone was not responsible for the weekly’s closing, he said, it was “the cherry on the cake, the coup de grâce,” because it would have revealed the magazine’s true circulation numbers.

He added that he sympathized with the workers who would lose their jobs.

Mr. Correa regularly rails at the press, accusing it of being biased against him and urging his followers not to read newspapers. He has frequently disputed television news reports and complained to newspapers about articles, headlines or, in at least one case, a cartoon, demanding corrections. Critics say he has created a climate in which journalists feel intimidated.

Last year, Mr. Correa won a libel lawsuit against a newspaper, El Universo, that included a $42 million judgment and could have sent a columnist and three executives at the paper to jail, until he pardoned them and forgave the fine.

He also sued Mr. Calderón, the editor of Vanguardia, and another journalist for a book they had written about Mr. Correa’s older brother, Fabricio Correa, and his involvement in government contracts. A judge ordered the defendants to pay Mr. Correa $2 million, but the president agreed last year to drop that legal action as well and said they would not have to pay.

On the last Friday night of June, as Vanguardia’s crestfallen staff tried to put out one more issue, the lugubrious scene felt like a wake.

But the staff kept working. “I will be satisfied that I did my job,” said Fernanda Grijalva, 27, who sat at her computer laying out pages.