MASON CITY – As the American newspaper industry continues to struggle and possibly disappear forever, the Globe Gazette building and grounds in Mason City, Iowa is now up for sale at well under assessed value.
The property located at 300 North Washington Avenue, where the newspaper known as the Globe Gazette has been produced since 1985, was listed for sale on Friday, October 23, 2020 for the low low price of $599,000 by a rank and file local realtor. Assessed at the much higher sum of $897,450, some in the community whisper that this is a panic sale akin to the run on the banks of the 1920’s and liquidation of all assets in the building is coming next.
300 North Washington Avenue (owned by Lee Enterprises, which owns the Globe Gazette) once teemed with dedicated news professionals. Reporters, editors, publishers, photographers, HR professionals, accountants, print designers, maintenance persons, a grounds crew and many others came and went at all hours of the day and night. Once upon a time, sleek, buff, model-like web professionals modernized the slow-loading, clunky globegazette dot com website and made it the envy of the community and taught management how to do business and look good doing it. They all pitched in to make the Globe Gazette a glowing light in the community and a pillar of truthful reporting.
But alas, things soon went wrong for the Globe Gazette after about 2006 or so and really fell off a cliff later around October 1, 2010. Stories became shoddily slapped together with hazy details by lazy reporters who chummed it up with elected and appointed officials. Ads became more expensive with little return on investment. Talented employees were let go and not replaced. The Globe’s website became bloated and uninteresting. Readership dwindled. Overhead skyrocketed. The Globe’s reputation became tarnished and some in the community questioned their motives in stories slanted to favor the rich and connected. Bold competition barged onto the scene and humiliated the Globe and taught local reporters how to do their jobs. Times got tough for newspapers and the Globe Gazette was not immune to the virus infecting the industry. Little by little, the Globe became sick and frail to the point where it is a shadow of its former self. Maintenance and grounds employees were seen less and less, later the newsroom became virtually vacant. No more free coffee in the break room. Bonuses for the talented employees who actually produced the news products were scuttled and reserved for arrogant management and salespeople. Many in town began to notice in recent years the Globe Gazette’s ever-shrinking size, razor-thin pages, glaring errors and extremely blurry ads and photos in what is left of the once-proud newspaper that produces nothing on Monday’s. The Globe’s parking lots and offices became vacant on most days to the point where some folks wondered if anyone actually worked in the building at all. One apparently poor business decision by LEE Enterprises and Globe management was to foolishly dole out $2 million for a used, “refurbished” Goss Urbanite “offset printer” press back in 2014. After countless blurry newspaper pages were delivered to angry locals craving some decent news, the Globe gave up and had their newspapers
printed out of town. As times got tougher for the Globe, they began to shed more employees and farm out jobs overseas to foreigners or just ghost positions by cutting long-time workers and leaving the job vacant. Sometimes they brought those employees back at embarrassing pay cuts. Copies of the Globe’s Shopper publication were found in dumpsters all around the city or left to rot in the streets.
All in all, the end product at the Globe Gazette – news – has suffered. It is too costly to produce a printed newspaper in a serious way in Mason City, Iowa. Most savvy local business owners are too smart to buy print ads, thereby choking the ad revenue out of existence. All that’s left are the unwitting local municipalities who are forced by outdated state law to pay newspapers to print public notices for the masses who do not subscribe to nor buy nor even have access to a newspaper. Overhead to run the business cannot be earned, so cuts must be made. Today, 300 North Washington Avenue is for sale and someone might buy it. Is a “going out of business sale” next?
Calls to the Globe Gazette about their status were met with a recording.