American consumers have been jolted by food safety scares in the past year ranging from dirty spinach to sickening peanut butter. Yet it was the case of contaminated pet food from China that seemed to galvanize public opinion that something in the system has gone awry. That’s just the way it is: consumers and newspaper readers can be fickle, walking away from serious stories about their own health in favor of less weighty pieces about dogs and cats. So how does a newspaper choose which food safety stories to cover? Take a look at how a major metro newspaper covers the food industry.

Matt McKinney covers food and agriculture for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He has followed the Chinese food scare, the rise of the organic industry, food innovations from Cargill and others, and the supermarket industry’s chase for consumer dollars in the Wal-Mart age. He has profiled successful CEO’s and chronicled the handing down of prison sentences for not-so-successful ones.

Matt has reported from Kosovo, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong. He graduated from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.

Special thanks to Osborn & Barr Communications for sponsoring this session.