If You Cover It, They Will Read

Garrison Keillor on what he likes to read in the newspaper:

I look at the papers more often now and find more that I want to read. In the old flush days, the paper seemed to go more for high-minded term papers about positive things happening in our community, but what I want to read is a clear account of what the police say happened when that man allegedly assaulted the woman walking down the avenue four blocks from my house. It doesn't take a team of eight journalists to come up with that. I also want the paper to send reporters to the meetings of legislative committees and the city council. I don't read political blogs and broadsides and the withering crossfire of partisans. Not interesting. Government is interesting. The difficult choices facing President Obama these days, some of which seem to point away from the positions he took as a candidate: all interesting. But it takes dedicated talented journalists to make it so, and if you put out a newspaper that they write, people will buy it.