When developers ask a story to hold

Carlos Sanchez, editor of The Waco Tribune-Herald, writes Sunday about what happened when one of the paper’s business reporters got wind of some real estate deals downtown that the developers didn’t want the general public to know about just yet.

Sanchez wrote, “Despite the wishes of a few key figures to withhold this news, we felt obligated to report it, mostly because the sale was a matter of public record: When the investors closed on the purchase, it was duly recorded at the McLennan County courthouse.

“We felt we couldn’t wait several weeks before reporting information that was not only public record, but that we also had come to discover was the subject of much discussion among many of the merchants who worked in the vicinity of Buzzard Billy’s.

“The good news is commercial news developments like this are something we as a newspaper are confronting more often, suggestive of the flurry of new economic activity in Waco.

“My vow is to be sensitive to the impact of our stories and to work hard to get the information to the public as quickly as possible.”

Read more here.