TRIB EDITOR: Denies killing council candidate/criminal tenants story

COLUMBIA, 3/17/10  (Beat Byte) --   The Columbia Daily Tribune's news editors did not kill a 2007 story about Third Ward Columbia City Council candidate Gary Kespohl habitually renting to habitual offenders, said Tribune managing editor Jim Robertson. 

 

"The suggestion that any Tribune editor killed a story about Gary Kespohl's properties is complete fiction," Robertson told the Heart Beat, responding to our quote on the matter from a credible, high-level Columbia Daily Tribune source.

 

"The source on this is as credible as they come," I replied in an email.  "If you'd like to come by my house and view the emails I received in this regard, I'll be happy to show them to you on background only, if and only if the sources' identities stay between you and I.  I do not care to forward them along or provide copies, however."

 

"Thanks, Mike, but I'm really not interested in the source," Robertson responded.  "I can tell you unequivocally that it's rubbish."

 

"I didn't publish the information lightly," I told Robertson.  "I did not ask for the information, either -- it was sent to me unsolicited, in response to heads up emails I had sent."