Hallie Linden yearns to write for the New York Times. At the moment, she’s stuck at a daily newspaper in tiny Green Meadow, Indiana, a town known for its amusement park and nothing else. It’s 1989, and juicy reporting jobs are hard to find. She resolves to work hard, win a few awards, and then welcome the job offers.

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens speaks with Cynthia Simmons. She’s author of a recent novel called Wrong Kind of Paper, the story of a young reporter in a small town who resists the corporate journalist demand to avoid “controversy.”

The novel unexpectedly turns into a two track thriller — one uncovering the deadly corruption and the other is the fight to get the story published.

Before her career as a reporter, novelist and professor of media law, Cynthia Simmons was the News Director of WORT-FM. Since then, she’s held numerous prestigious reporting positions, and is now the Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State, where she teaches mass media law.

In this interview, she also shares with Ahrens the special contribution of listener-supported radio by providing the information necessary for a democracy to function.