[4] Following the end of the Cobalt boom, Browning moved the paper to North Bay in 1921;[4] he then sold it to W. E. Mason, the owner of the Sudbury Star, in 1922, and moved to Sudbury in 1927 to become managing editor of the Star.

[4] In 1935, the newspaper received compelling evidence that the famous conservationist Grey Owl, who passed as half-Indian in the latter years of his life, claiming he was the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman, was in fact an English-born immigrant named Archibald Stansfeld Belaney with no Indigenous ancestry.

However, Mason ordered the story held for the remainder of Grey Owl's life, as he appreciated his work.

Mason remained the Nugget's owner until his death in 1948,[5] following which an employee buyout purchased it from his estate.

[7] Southam acquired the Thomson Newspapers chain in 1996, reuniting the Nugget and the Star under common ownership.