Rural county's 'Arts and Ag Tour' is a hit, and the local paper covers it like the dew covers Dixie

Last year, a woman who moved from Atlanta to rural Hickman County, Tennessee, about 50 miles west of Nashville, had an idea: Set up an annual Arts and Ag tour to promote the county's many artists, artisans, crafters, musicians and specialty-crop farmers. The first one went well, and the second "was a rousing success, both for attracting visitors from in and out of the area and for vendors who offered local products for sale," reports Editor Brad Martin in the weekly Hickman County Times.

The weekly paper went all-out to cover the event, scattering its photo and text coverage over 10 pages. The paper is not online, but you can see its Arts and Ag pages in an 8mb PDF on the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues site, here. (For a larger version of this front-page centerpiece, click on it.)

"This is a classically rural event, because its underlying theme is people," Martin told the Institute in an email. "You can't punch your ticket at all 25 stops no matter how hard you try, because you will find something fascinating along the way and someone just as fascinating to tell you about it, be it beekeeping or bread-making, and you'll spend an hour without trying."