Breaking News

Editorial

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, ...

People needed to join the ranks of blood donors

The idea of getting poked with a big needle and having some of your blood siphoned out is not at all a pleasant one. However, people who are brave enough to get jabbed and allow some of their blood to be drawn out are a type of hero commonly called a blood donor. They save a lot of lives. Donating blood takes about an hour, according to leaders of LifeServe Blood Center, which has a facility in Fort Dodge. In that hour, a blood donor can save three local lives, they say. Blood and blood products are needed by trauma patients, premature infants, cancer patients, organ transplant ...

It’s time to honor local leaders

Do you know anyone who has worked hard, perhaps out of the public view, to make Fort Dodge and Webster County a better place to live, work and play? If so, a unique opportunity to honor them is at hand. The Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance is seeking nominees for its Catalyst Award and its new Emerging Leader Award. The Catalyst Award has long been the highest honor bestowed by the Growth Alliance. Nominees for it should meet these basic criteria: • Have a history of active involvement in the Growth Alliance. • Have shown that they are an active and visionary leader ...

Growth at Corridor Plaza sets Fort Dodge apart

It can be pretty easy to drive right by the area where Crossroads Mall once stood without even thinking about what’s there now. We think it’s worthwhile to pause and consider the remarkable change that has taken place there. In fact, the redevelopment of the mall site into today’s Corridor Plaza will surely make other communities across Iowa and the Midwest envious. How many other Iowa communities, or communities across the nation, have been able to take an outdated enclosed mall, demolish it and then turn the property into a thriving area that draws hundreds of people ...

The Christmas spirit of giving should continue throughout the year

Every year around the holidays, the generosity of people who live in and around Fort Dodge blossoms. The familiar red kettles of The Salvation Army get filled with change by people going in and out of stores. Donations flow for initiatives like Bikes for Tykes. Those are some of the best-known helping campaigns in the Fort Dodge area that ramp up at Christmas time, and we know there are a lot of others out there as well. The holiday season is now over. Several charitable programs have gone dormant until next Christmas. But the need is still there. Hunger, sickness, poverty and ...