Driving east out of Waitsburg you quickly reach the county line. A small sign on Highway 12 indicates that you're crossing from Walla Walla into Columbia county, but nothing else changes. The hills that mark the Touchet Valley watershed continue in the distance as the wheat fields, grain tanks and farms roll by.

For the purposes of this editorial, we'd like to use the valley's seamless landscape as a metaphor for our news coverage of the area and its community. It's in answer to a question we've had from some of our readers why we have "so many Dayton stories" in the Times. The way we look...