MASON CITY – The town newspaper in Mason City, the Globe Gazette, is leaving its long-time headquarters near downtown after the building was sold and suffered a fire.
The owner of the Globe Gazette, Lee Enterprises, sold the home of the Globe Gazette on June 1, 2021. It was listed for sale on Friday, October 23, 2020 for $599,000 and sold for just $300,000, records show, to Tierney South, LLC. The Globe had been in the building since 1985.
On June 10, 2021 sometime around 10 PM, the building suffered a fire. Mason City Fire Marshall Jamey Medlin told NIT, “the cause of the fire was an overheated bearing on an air handling unit. Minor fire/heat damage to the air handling unit with no fire or heat damage to the building. MCFD ventilated the building of light smoke before we left.”
NIT is told the Globe Gazette will be vacating the downtown area, which appears to possibly be in the middle of boom time for Mason City standards, in favor of a low-profile, aging, small office on the city’s west side, where most people may not even notice it exists. The tiny office will be more in-line with the Globe’s dwindling employee count and the fact the Globe no longer prints its newspaper locally despite spending $2 million for a used, “refurbished” Goss Urbanite “offset printer” press back in 2014.