Good Times was founded in 1975 by Jay Shore, who remained its owner/operator and editor for 13 years. Shore established
Good Times amidst a proliferation in the 1970s of short-lived free counterculture newspapers in
Santa Cruz County that included
The Free Spaghetti Dinner,
Sundaz!,
Santa Cruz Times,
People’s Press and the
Santa Cruz Independent. In 1988, Shore sold the paper to
Independent Newspapers of New Zealand, part of
Rupert Murdoch’s group of holdings, a year before much of downtown Santa Cruz was destroyed in the
Loma Prieta earthquake. In 1998, Independent Newspapers sold
Good Times to Central Valley Publishing, later renamed Pacific-Sierra Publishing. In 2003, Pacific-Sierra head Anthony Allegretti lead a buyout to form a new company, MainStreet Media Group. In 2014, New England–based Brookside Capital sold
Good Times. to
Metro Newspapers, which owned the competing
Santa Cruz Weekly, returning the publication to local ownership for the first time since the 1980s. The
Santa Cruz Weekly, which began as
Metro Santa Cruz in 1994, combined operations with
Good Times following the purchase. On the eve of the sale, former
Good Times publisher Ron Slack complained about the lack of investment in the product by its former owners, saying
Good Times didn't get much support from its corporate parent in upgrades in equipment and software.
Good Times was an active sponsor with Tom Schot in presenting disc sports to Californians by way of the 1978
Santa Cruz Flying Disc Classic and the
Santa Cruz Good Times Ultimate Team.
Good Times was the first publication to give voice to
Rob Brezsny's "Free Will Astrology" Column. On July 1, 2019, Good Times expanded its South County reach with the purchase of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Watsonville Register-Pajaronian, returning it to local control after 78 years of ownership by two multiple-state national media companies. It also acquired as part of the transaction the Aptos Life monthly. ==References==