Gather 'round children, and you will hear, when daily newspapers had no peer....Hard to believe now, but not very long ago, daily newspapers hired writers who also reported. These were the kind of literary roustabouts who could go from writing a book, to a New Yorker piece, to how a local bad guy got what was coming to him for your local paper. Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins,  Brian Woolley - if you never got to read a long Sunday Magazine piece by these kinds of writers, you just can't appreciate the status daily dead tree media had in its last glory days. Bill Minutaglio is one of those writers. He worked for the Dallas Morning News in its Austin bureau, but he's also written a couple of books and lots of magazine articles. He's now a journalism professor at UT and writes a "State of the Media" column for the venerable Texas Observer. In his latest observations, he takes note of the side effect of a Rick Perry run for president - a recent uptick in Texas environmental reporting among the mainstream media that's seen its interest in such stories generally decline over the past decade. But News abhors a vacuum and Minutaglio also discusses the rise of local grassroots blogs that are increasingly becoming primary sources of information and breaking news. As evidence of this trend, he cites our very own front page blog, as well as Sharon Wilson's BlueDaze. We know we've arrived when we get mentioned in the same sentence as Sharon. Thanks very much to Mr. Minutaglio for his kind words. With the continued support our readers, we'll keep trying to provide the news citizens need to make their air cleaner, and their government more responsive.