Well, news broke recently that the City of Grand Junction was abandoning its plans to acquire the property next door to HomewardBound as the new location to move the homeless resource center.

And at The Business Times, we’ve received a few accolades as being a catalyst for this occurrence. I guess that’s fine. I suppose we played some small role. But from my desk this morning, let’s just say I’m a tad melancholy about the whole affair. I’m not thrilled we had to bring it to everyone’s attention.

Now, you may say that The Business Times, through its editorial, brought to light serious concerns about how our city is performing its role related to solving what is becoming an escalating, serious problem of homelessness in our town. Again, thank you. I think we did. Yet that makes me sad. Because why does so much of what our city does make most problems worse?

From my perspective this is about two things. One I just mentioned in how government sees its job. And the other, is in how I see mine and conversely, how all of us at The Business Times see ours.

And while it’s an old adage that hardly applies any longer to old-school media entities in our nation and across the globe, it’s still the simplest explanation of what the press should do: The press is here to speak truth to power. And the ultimate power in our country is the government.

It’s why freedom of the press is one of the first things mentioned on the parchment upon which we govern the country. And this isn’t about my truth. Any truth that’s subjective to one’s personal beliefs, feelings or desires isn’t truth. This has nothing to do with what I want. It has everything to do with what free people deserve.

Here’s a little truth for you: You aren’t free. But I digress.

Truth told, I’d love to go back to much of what The Business Times did so well in telling uplifting and quality stories about local businesses for its first 30 years of existence. As a matter of fact, we did it so well that our just retired editor of 25 years received the inaugural “Spirit of Business Award” from the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce. Frankly, the award should be named for Phil Castle, as no one has done, or will do, for businesses in the Grand Valley what Phil did with The Business Times.

Speaking of business and Phil, he sure made it easy to sell advertising for my business. The product Phil forged through his wonderful work is now allowing me a new opportunity to do things a little differently. Some of this will be a major disappointment to those who put answers on our latest surveys saying, “Stop doing MAGA stories” or “less conservative opinion.” Probably not gonna happen. In fact, you’ll probably see a double down on these things, which generally fall under our “opinion” section – a section I hope grows to several pages in this new iteration of The Business Times.

But back to the topic at hand. The truth we strive for here at The Business Times isn’t about MAGA, or conservatism or “right wing” journalism. Those are just labels from folks who have a difference of OPINION. Because that’s much of the feedback is whether we’re doing a story, editorial or I do some sounding off (which is a LOT) in the paper.

When we did a story about the Fourth and Fifth Streets’ ongoing boondoggle (I can say that here, it’s an opinion piece), using actual quotes from our mayor, the “communications staff” from the city demanded retractions, saying the story went in a different direction than they thought it would (even though they sat in on the interview) and that The Business Times call the mayor Abram and not Abe when referring to our local potentate. A request, mind you, which has not been made to any other media organization, let alone the city uses itself in almost all its communications, as they all still call him Abe.

But oddly, the city didn’t dispute any of the information in the story.

When we ran the editorial on relationships between HomewardBound, its board of directors and our city council and the appearance of a conflict of interest in the rewarding of the contract for the resource center and subsequent attempt to purchase the real estate next door to HomewardBound to move the resource center into after its temporary location closes this spring, the city simply demanded a retraction of our opinion. And its evidence for retraction? Its opinion differed.

Sorry, City of Grand Junction, if you want your opinion as a story without questions, there are other media outlets more than willing to do it in River City. As for me and my house, we’ll keep asking questions and going wherever the answers lead us. Will this tact create a more difficult journey reporting on the city? Given the makeup of the council right now, I’d say yes.

But the times (and The Business Times) change, pendulums swing, and elections have consequences. We’re about to see that in the next city council election in a few weeks.

And yes, we’ll have questions for those winners. Hopefully, we’ll have elected folks happy to answer them.

Craig Hall is owner and publisher of the Business Times. Reach him at (970) 424-5133 or publisher@thebusinesstimes.com.