Column about grocery chain pulled from paper after complaint

Elaine Wolf of Plaza de Armas reports that a column by Scott Stroud in the San Antonio Express-News last month about the H-E-B grocery store chain headquartered in the city was pulled after a complaint.

Wolf writes, “Stroud told PDA that he ‘can’t talk about details either on or off the record.’ But based on the recollection of sources Stroud interviewed, the piece examined longstanding complaints that the company’s stores on North New Braunfels and W. W. White Road, in the city’s historically black neighborhoods, are badly in need of renovation, and stocked with produce and meats the company wouldn’t consider purveying in wealthier parts of town.

“‘Scott Stroud’s column about renovation of the H-E-B stores on this city’s Eastside did not meet editors’ standards and thus was not published,’ Express-News Editor Bob Rivard wrote in a March 30 email to businessman Lou Miller, who sits on the board of VIA Metropolitan Transit and is a close adviser of District 2 Councilwoman Ivy Taylor.”

Read more here. Last month, the Detroit News pulled a column critical of Chrysler after a complaint, but then apologized for doing so, saying it undermined its credibility.

Romenesko has the full article here.