Even though I run a weekly newspaper, I can’t get my head around how “clarifying” this took a week, or how bad reporting can pretty much destroy a livelihood in the same amount of time.

How else can one explain what happened to (according to the same KKCO who was destroying their business) “popular restaurant Koi Ramen and Sushi” last week after it received a few health code “violations” that thousands of restaurants have received since “health inspections” became out-of-control posses riding roughshod over the folks we love to go see, because we hate to cook?

The fact is: It was KKCO (and some laziness from the local twice a week “daily”) who did Koi dirty. Because Koi’s violations can at least be fixed. And while each of these news outlets have their hard-earned reputations, where does Koi go to get its reputation back?

Let me be clear on my take on local restaurants and “health inspections.” No. 1: Restaurants aren’t in business to poison their customers. No. 2: If you can or should do it in your home when it comes to food, the same should be applied in a restaurant. And before you scream, “What about washing your hands after you go to the bathroom, Craig!?” kindly reread the last line.

So yes, we should all wash our hands after using the facilities before handling food. But let’s also be honest about this: We all don’t keep boxes of “single-use, plastic gloves” lying about, so we can change them every time we go from chopping lettuce to handling tomatoes every time we make a salad. I’d go into how much plastic we could save on that alone, but that would take also going into the rabbit hole of banning your favorite bags at the grocery store when everything else is wrapped in plastic, and I don’t have the time, space or energy to cover both idiocies from government.

So, even though it will be ignored, I am stating for the record that health procedures should be part of a restaurant’s main functions. I’ll also state the ones Koi had levied upon it are impossible to uphold 100 percent of the time, and every restaurant on any given day could be busted on them. I just don’t think they are reason enough to shutter someone’s livelihood, even for a day.

Which is why at The Business Times we don’t have a “popular” blotter about health inspections of local restaurants. Frankly, I can’t think of a reason to even cover them, even if I thought they were integral to the health of the public. Hint: They aren’t.

All one needs to do is review the idiocy a few years back of taping off every other seat, social distancing and “wearing your mask until you sit down because COVID only spreads from five feet and above” to wonder why health departments have so many insane rules. And who did those dictates come from? That’s right, the “daily” and our health department.

So back to the weekly “Restaurant Inspection Blotter for Feb 5, 2026,” at the“daily.” Interesting, they don’t even put it into print on a day they actually print, so that says something about its importance, or not. Anyways, in that report there are not one, but two, inspection reports about Koi. The first one from the inspection on Feb. 3 was the lead report, and there was a decent size list, again mostly to do with the gloves and employee actions, and that’s the report the news hawks at KKCO based its reporting on. And yes, there were enough violations to have the restaurant closed (my guess is to have a staff meeting to discuss some hygiene issues). But if KKCO’s Internet-posting team had bothered to scroll to the bottom, it would have also read that the Koi was open and passed inspection on Feb. 4 with only one minor violation.

Which begs one question: How did KKCO come up with the headline over a picture of the restaurant stating: The popular restaurant Koi Ramen & Sushi in Grand Junction has been forced to “close its doors” after a failed health inspection? I put “close its doors” in quotations for a reason, and you know what it is: It means to any rational thinker Koi went out of business. Answer: It gets clicks. Then again, so did today’s Facebook post about a pickleball melee in Florida. Rational thinkers also know why the Koi post is worse.

You see, the day KKCO first reported the story was Feb. 6, a full two days AFTER Koi had addressed all of the health department’s concerns to satisfaction and reopened after a couple of hours of “shutdown.” But here’s the coy part about Koi. KKCO also shows the original report had been updated on Feb. 10 with a note stating Koi had to “address all identified violations and pass a follow-up inspection before it can legally resume service…” when it ALREADY had. And the worst part, those stories are still up as I type this column on Feb. 13.

“Now just a minute, Craig,” you say, “KKCO posted a “clarification” on the night of Feb. 12, explaining everything.” And you’d be right; that’s what it posted. But in that post, it got the date of its original story WRONG, saying it was originally posted on the 5th when it was the 6th of February, according to my screenshot. Was that to make the mistake sound more natural by being closer to the date of the second inspection? Not sure how such sloppy reporting can be excused when KKCO didn’t even bother to contact the Health Department until at least after the 10th (the date of its update to the original report), otherwise the clarification would have been made much earlier, and the stories would have been pulled, no?

As of my typing, the stories are still up on KKCO.

Now back to the “daily.” Why wasn’t it reported that Koi had already reopened. After all, they had to know Koi was open, because they also posted in the last “blot” how Koi passed inspection with only one minor violation on Feb. 4. Why didn’t they report all concerns from Feb. 3 were addressed and Koi was reopened? Then again, why doesn’t the “daily” include in the reports the “level” (I forgot the word it uses and have used up my access for the month) of concern the “violations” pose to the public as it pronounces in the header to the “report?” Maybe they could both start with using another word besides violations – or at least use the words minor or major in front of it?

Then again, maybe, just maybe, the folks at KKCO could have called Koi and the health department to get the facts of what was going on? Heck, KKCO could have called the “daily,” and even though they wouldn’t have gotten all the story (let’s not forget why it publishes “the list”), they certainly could have ascertained the story wasn’t close to what they eventually posted.

To think, basic reporting skills learned in high school journalism could have prevented two local “news” sources from potentially destroying a “popular” local business. I know from my source they have already ruined Koi’s Valentine’s Day business.

If we ever do something so careless, I hope the other local news outlets would have someone on staff write something up to call us out – for our own good. At least it would make us print a retraction or “clarification” immediately, and we’d for sure take the story down. For the record, being coy isn’t a clarification, it’s a CYA. It’s also why much of mainstream media isn’t trusted.

So, if those outlets ever must clarify what we print, please don’t be coy about it.

That said, I’m gonna be Koi about things this weekend and get me some great, local hospitality and food from one of Grand Junction’s popular restaurants. It makes one wonder why local news affiliates worked so hard to publish so much bad about places obviously doing things so good. Otherwise, how would they be so “popular?”

In Truth and freedom.

Craig Hall is owner and publisher of The Business Times. Reach him at 424-5133 or publisher@thebusinesstimes.com