Jane Smiley Quotes

People essentially like local news better than network news.

There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.

I've always been a firm believer in local news, because it's an opportunity to connect with the community where you live.

It's important that communities support local, independent journalism, which many people rely upon for information relevant to their daily lives.

A news junkie, I read, daily, the 'Times/Sunday Times,' the 'Guardian/Observer,' 'Mail,' and the 'Argus' - both to keep up with crime in Brighton, where I set my novels, and because I think it is vital to support local papers - they provide a unique accountability for councils, emergency services and so much else, and are dangerously undervalued.

I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. Alaska isn't a foreign country.

I get 'USA Today,' the 'New York Times,' 'Wall Street Journal' and the 'Star-Telegram' at my doorstep. I can't do without them.

I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.

If you take the more general role of going to local stations around the country in Montana or South Carolina or wherever, and start in the local news, it's a lot more difficult to get to the stories that you want to really cover.

I get the 'The New York Times' and 'Los Angeles Times' thrown at my door every morning. I'll read the front page of 'The New York Times,' then the op-eds, then scan the arts section and then the sports section. Then I do the same with the 'L.A. Times.'

Newspapers have an extraordinary amount of local content, including real estate listings and restaurant reviews.

Any person that don't read at least one well-written country newspaper is not truly informed.

One-newspaper towns are not good because all the surviving newspaper does is print money. They make 25 percent on their money every year, and if they go down to 22 percent, they start laying people off.

In fact, I don't read newspapers any longer.

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I'm in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.

My challenge was even greater as a journalist, because this was happening in my own backyard.

In the New York Times, you're going to get completely different information than you would in the USA Today.

When I started at the Globe 40 years ago, there were seven newspapers in Boston and now there are only two. There were only three or four television stations in Boston and now there are a dozen.

I didn't look at any of the newspapers, I look at the pictures sometimes, but apart from that I don't read them.

Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers.

Television has a real problem. They have no page two.

Local television and local TV news isn't telling the voters about local candidates.