MASON CITY – Allegedly shoddy, sloppy and inaccurate reporting out of the Globe Gazette “newspaper” this morning about a shooting threat has led to chaos, fear and closed doors at the Mason City library today.
According to the Director of the Mason City library:
“The Globe Gazette reported this morning that a person was arrested on Wednesday, and that said person threatened to shoot a specific library employee. After talking to the Chief of Police, it was determined that this was inaccurate reporting by the Globe Gazette. The person threatened was a Hart Brothers employee. It is absolute chaos here with upset staff and phone calls, etc. The library will be closed until Monday to get everything sorted out and everyone calmed down.”
NIT Publisher Matt Marquardt noticed the strange headline from the Globe Gazette in Google search results this morning while working in the newsroom, claiming a threat to a library employee but somehow also stating someone entirely different was threatened. The Google search result, which is still displaying at the time of publication of this story and could cause further disruption and chaos, is below:
Clicking the story headline, it appears that either the reporter, Matthew Rezab, or an editor (if the Globe even employs one?) has updated the article to remove the false information about the library, but did not at all admit there was an error in the story previously. This change hasn’t yet impacted search results across the internet.
The story as it appears in a cell phone browser currently is completely weird, showing the story headline and then below that, the photo of a recently-deceased Hollywood actor from “Rocky” movies, Burt Young. Low-information readers might actually think poor Burt Young is a suspect in this crime. See below a screenshot of the slipshod work at the Globe:
NIT Publisher Matt Marquardt had this to say about the current state of the Globe Gazette:
“No one really even knows you exist, and many believe that no one even works in your newsroom anymore. You are irresponsible locally, with apparently incompetent and unqualified persons creating content and then sending it to your clearinghouse out of town to be mish-mashed in with content made elsewhere and then re-distributed across Lee web sites. The Globe Gazette should really shut down just like the library was forced to, and pay a stiff penalty on top of that. Anyone with subscriptions should cancel and instead send the money to the library to keep it functioning at the high level we have come to know there. We at NIT hope the library staff and any citizens impacted by this cheap, crappy Globe Gazette reporting are recovering.”
