Roanoke paper reacts to WSJ piece about large employer

Michael Stowe, the managing editor of the Roanoke Times, writes Sunday in response to reader complaints about why the newspaper didn’t reprint a Wall Street Journal article about the area’s largest health care provider, Carilion Clinic.

Stowe writes, “We recognize the importance of health care in the region and that Carilion’s influence in the Roanoke Valley is unmatched. That’s why we have had a full-time reporter assigned to cover the health care business for more than a decade. The beat, covered now by Sarah Bruyn Jones, is one of the most demanding at the paper.

“Reporters and editors here had been anticipating the Wall Street Journal story for months.

“We knew that Journal reporter John Carreyrou had visited Roanoke earlier in the summer to report on Carilion’s growing influence in the region. What new facts or sources, we wondered, might he uncover?

“When the story published in the Journal on Aug. 28, we were pleased to see few surprises.”

Read more here.