RICHFIELD SPRINGS, N.Y. (WKTV) - A small Otsego County newspaper will print its last issue Wednesday.

Bigger city newspapers have already fallen victim to the bad economy - The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and The Seattle Post Intelligencer have printed their last issues.

Now we see that sad trend hitting close to home - the Richfield Springs Mercury - a weekly that comes out every Thursday afternoon, is printing its last issue Wednesday.

For a small village, Richfield Springs has quite the journalistic history - they've had a newspaper for the better part of 142 years.

And the current publishers - Mercury Media - wanted nothing more than to continue the proud tradition they took over in 2003.

But the son of the publisher, who runs the day to day operations in Richfield Springs, says, you can't operate forever without turning a profit.

"Well, we certainly don't want to cry in public," said Associate Editor Jason Bernhardt. "But I'm sure we all will be doing so behind closed doors later because it's very sad. We just take it very personally, you know, because it is our paper, we put our hard work into it."

Bernhardt says if the economy rebounds, and if they could put that same team together again, the Richfield Springs Mercury could see print again.

It was a sad day for staff, but they love the paper and their readers and they hung in there until Wednesday.

Some of their reflections, high points and low points, on the Live at Five Newshour and NEWSChannel 2 at Six.