Washington reporter who dissed Red Lake County will move to Red Lake County

Photo: Christopher Ingraham

There’s so much lovely irony in the news today that Washington Post columnist Christopher Ingraham has decided to move to Red Lake County in Minnesota. Newcomers spend a lifetime trying to find welcoming souls in the state, and all Ingraham had to do was write something nasty about the place.

Ingraham, who translates news via data, declared that Red Lake County is the ugliest county in America last August, even though he’d never visited. And then he doubled down when the Twitter backlash began.

A few weeks later, he took the county up on its offer to visit, and was charmed by the hospitality and honored as visiting royalty, pretty much as most newcomers are.

When they introduced Ingraham to a cow, well, that’s all she wrote.

“I kind of fell in love with Red Lake County when I visited last year and we’ve always wanted to raise the boys in the country,” he announced over the weekend on his Facebook page.

Ingraham is going to be “one of us” while still working for the Washington Post.

“The plan is to stay for a year or two and see how it goes. I’ll still be doing my usual thing for the Post, just remotely. But who knows maybe living up there will inspire a story or two,” he wrote.

“We are just trying to find a place to stay, and once we have that ironed out, we’ll be heading out there,” he tells the Grand Forks Herald.

“The cows were lovely,” he said. “Hopefully, we can move next to the cows.”