In Rochester, the Times they are a changing no more as hometown paper folds

Above the fold of the Rochester Time's premiere issue back in February 1993. (Courtesy image)

ROCHESTER - The economically challenged Rochester Times ended a long and tortuous death spiral last week with its announcement it has ceased publication.

Since its onset shortly after the former Rochester Courier went under in 1993, the Times has had a hard time - first under the direction of the Foster's Daily Democrat and then under Seacoast Online, which bought Foster's in 2014 - attracting readers to its dwindling base.

Seacoast Media Group publisher John Tabor noted in the final edition of the newspaper that only about 2,000 readers remained.

It should be noted that likely means 700-1,000 or so subscribers, as newspaper executives have long made readership estimates based on two or three reading each newspaper.

Over its troubled past the newspaper went from a paid publication to free and then paid again as newspaper management sought to find a way to keep the paper adrift in a changing newspaper environment.

Along the way a practice of using recycled Foster's stories in the following week's Rochester Times helped to distance readers who began to see they were getting secondhand news in their own hometown newspaper.

The loss of the Rochester Times leaves Rochester without a hometown newspaper for the first time in decades.

In its heyday, the former Rochester Courier was actually a daily publication.