The "News From Lake Wobegon" is a report by Template:GK-author of the recent events taking place in Lake Wobegon during the week. It is included in the second half of A Prairie Home Companion (APHC) radio show Garrison created and is typically preceded by announcing, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown, out on the edge of the prairie", sometimes with "my hometown" being said at the end.
The first item of news is a recounting of the weather and its effects on the Lake Wobegon residents. From there, details about what the residents have been doing are provided. For events and conversations that Garrison was not directly a witness for, he stated that "I have my sources".
The report usually concludes with, "And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average."
Many reports include conversations or details about himself as a resident of Lake Wobegon. For information about the character "Garrison Keillor", see Template:GK-resident.
Conclusion and novelizations
With Keillor's second retirement from APHC in July 2016, no more reports have been broadcast. However, many of the events from the reports have been expanded and/or re-written to become full stories or novels published since 1985. Two examples include the baseball game played between the Lake Wobegon Schroeders and Babe Ruth's travelling all-star team in 1934 becoming the story "The Babe", and the events surrounding the death of Barbara Peterson's mother, an unexpected wedding, and visiting Lutheran pastors from Denmark taking an excursion aboard a pontoon boat became the novel Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon.