MASON CITY – The Globe Gazette has axed its editor, Jaci Smith, as the dwindling newspaper teeters on the brink.
Lee Enterprises, owner of the Globe Gazette (Mason City’s “official newspaper” for years), has bragged about cutting its workforce before. Ominously, Lee has filed bankruptcy in an attempt to stay in business. Late last year, Alden Capital Group invaded Lee’s realm and is attempting a hostile takeover as Lee begs shareholders to vote for their hand-picked board member to try and stave off the aggressive New Yorkers. The matter is now in court.
So, Monday’s news that the Globe Gazette is axing their editor comes as no shock to those who follow the antics of Lee and the diminishing influence of this small town newspaper. Not that many years ago, the Globe spent $2 million on a used printing press, only later to farm out the printing of their tiny print product to Des Moines; the decent into oblivion was clear to the savvy amongst us.
Smith had only been at the Globe Gazette since 2019, when she was named editor of the North Iowa Media Group.
Laid off today, friends. Please support local journalism. It's so important. And yeah, send any winning lottery tickets my way. 🙂 #journalismmatters
— Jaci Smith (@FloridaJaci) February 7, 2022
i wouldnt pay for a years subscription, it wont be around before it runs out. dont think your getting a refund, haha
4 years or so back, I had a 1 year subscription. Almost 6 months in, we started to get renewal notices in the mail, and by phone. Since we had 6 months left on the current subscription, we just ignored all the renewal requests. A few weeks later all of the sudden we stopped getting the Globe. So we called the number of the renewal department and told them, hey, we have about 6 months left, where is our paper? They kept saying, your subcription has run out, you need to renew. We would even give them the date they pulled the money from our bank account. In these 20 minute conversations, they would eventually tell us, that they would temporarily extend our paper delivery, but would have to “escalate” our subscription “problem” to their customer support group who we never heard from…..ever! This cycle went on and on back a forth every couple of weeks when all of the sudden the paper was no longer being delivered again. Finally we were able to get a hold of some someone who told us that the reason our 1 year subscription ran out at 6 months was we were getting ” premium ” editions. What was that? The inserts they told us which included all the puzzles that were years old and ran before. So this is now like 8 months into our 1 year subscription. We asked either for a refund for the last 4 months or the normal delivery of the paper. They finally relented and did the the deliveries. After that experience. No more subscription for us!
Who wants to deal with that kind of stuff just to get what you already paid for@
I got the Lee stock proxy the other day. Usually I vote against the people the board “recommends”. This time I voted for. Alden Capital is bad news. If they get ahold of the Globe, they will probably pull the plug on it in Mason City. Or turn it into a twice weekly publication. Dont get me wrong. I am not a big fan, but with basically losing KIMT, we can’t afford to loose anymore media here in town.
Matt hopefully could pick up more local advertising. But one thing media never does is lay off salespeople. Globe’s salespeople may be out writing stories pretty soon just to keep their jobs.
The Glob is a fraction of a once proud paper. It has diminished through firings of quality people. It has hired the leftovers that literally work for peanuts in an effort to pay personal bills. Most employeed have to hide their heads when asked where they work. Anyone advertising in this school newspaper better not pay more than $50 per ad. If not for the Winter Surf Party, they would have gone broke years ago.
Only the realtors keep it going now.
Did the cost of the Sunday paper go down? Last Sunday it was only $2.00 at Hy-Vee. It even said $2 on top of the front page.I was paying $4.00 a few weeks before. There are practically no more inserts. Were we paying an extra $2 a copy for those?
GG still puts out a Sunday? And, someone actually paid 2 bucks for it?
…should be .20 cents
I’m not paying $3 a day to see who won last nights sportsball match.
NIT crushes it’s competition in River City!
Well, after I quit that awful place, they definitely got nasty with their former Webmaster. Why. Why not leave the pit bull alone. So I had to create NIT out of thin air; a masterstroke, really. And teach the bums there how to really report news. And maybe put some of those bums IN the news. Now, most of um ain’t got gainful employment. The cart fetching and fryer scrubbing awaits you, now get to it.
Globe was supposed to be the political center but leans overwhelmingly to the dems.
The GG is nothing but lies. Personal experience!!!!
Not to worry – the hostile outfit is NOT hostile – They are friends and partners of hunter biden from chinaland.
What Globe Gazette? That rag is worthless.