Breaking News

Editorial

Have a safe Super Bowl Sunday

There is one more professional football game to be played in the 2025-2026 season. There are few Americans who have not heard of this particular contest called the Super Bowl. The sporting event that will take place Sunday evening has essentially no equal. Sure, there are the Olympics, the World Series, the Stanley Cup finals and the NBA championships. The excitement of those events are all spread over a number of days. Sunday’s Super Bowl, however, will pack all the excitement into a few intense hours. The upcoming clash will pit the AFC champion New England Patriots against ...

Progress coming in the quest for child care options in Fort Dodge

For a long time, parents of young children in Fort Dodge and Webster County have faced a dilemma — how are their children going to be properly cared for while they are at work? It’s possible that some parents never find the answer to that question and end up staying out of the workforce. There are a number of very good local child care providers, but there just aren’t enough of them to meet the demand. All of the openings in their programs are filled as soon as they become available. That’s why it’s nice to see some scaffolding and stacks of building materials in front ...

Nestle Purina boosts veterinary technician program

For decades, Iowa Central Community College has worked to help address the health care needs of the area by training generations of nurses, paramedics and X-ray technicians. Now the college is moving to help meet the health care needs of all the animals in the region. Because northern Iowa is an agricultural area, there is a lot of livestock that needs some veterinary attention. Plus there are all the dogs, cats, hamsters, birds and other pets that are members of so many local families. The college’s relatively new veterinary technician program received a huge boost recently from a ...

Parochial schools serve area well

There has been a Catholic school system in Fort Dodge for almost as long as this town has been in existence. There are other towns in the area The Messenger serves that can make similar claims. The same can be said for St. Paul Lutheran School in Fort Dodge. Both schools will celebrate their heritage this week as both Catholic Schools Week and Lutheran Schools Week will be marked at the same time. Both commemorative weeks started Sunday and will end Saturday. Catholic education got underway in Fort Dodge more than 160 years ago. The first Catholic school came into being during the ...

Progress 2026 sections begin today

As the holiday season draws to a close each year, The Messenger’s writing staff embarks on a challenging adventure — producing a comprehensive look at how a wide array of developments in our region are shaping tomorrow. While every issue of this newspaper is filled with articles, features and advertisements that readers find informative and useful, the six special sections we call Progress provide a perspective that goes far beyond simply reporting the latest happenings. Our goal is to look at the big picture, capture trends and explore more fully events that may lead to headlines ...

We honor a dream of justice

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to be observed Monday, is an appropriate time to recall an exceptional person. But more importantly, it’s a time to recommit the nation to the cause for which King died and the legacy he left for all of us. The famed civil rights leader, assassinated April 4, 1968, was a preacher with a message as important today as it was more than five decades ago. He saw God’s words as fundamentally connected to his call for equality, nonviolence and justice. King’s religious faith was the heart, center and soul of his work. Without God’s word, King believed, ...