Garrison Keillor on the loss of daily newspapers

Photo courtesy of A Prairie Home Companion.

Garrison Keillor doesn't mess around.

While signing the "Save the Times-Picayune" petition last week, Minnesota's own Garrison Keillor compared a city without a newspaper to "an office park with some malls."

The Times-Picayune's owners, Advance Publications, announced last month that beginning this fall, the Pulitzer-winning, New Orleans-based newspaper would be published only three times a week, staff would be cut, and resources would focus mostly on the website Nola.com.

The petition asks Advance Publications, owned by the descendants of billionaire publisher S.I. Newhouse, to "maintain the publishing frequency and proud legacy of the Times-Picayune and its other newspapers."

Without mincing words, Keillor, the iconic host of "A Prairie Home Companion," wrote:

Garrison Keillor comments in a petition to keep the New Orleans paper a daily

Keillor joined other famous signatories, such as author Anne Rice, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, journalist Linda Ellerbee, humorist Roy Blount Jr., and actor Ed Asner.