Travis Hegele poses in American Sprinklers Inc.’s new premises Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022, at the former Stangier Auto Supply building, 128 S.E. Second St., Pendleton. He and his brother, Rocky Hegele, operate the company, and are making the building into a regional headquarters.

Several of our most popular online stories have been related to public safety, but readers also are tuning into business reporting. Reporter John Tillman’s feature “Terrebonne family expands sprinkler business to Eastern Oregon” shows some businesses see a lot of growth potential in our area.

We also have stories coming for the weekend about the Northwest Native Economic Summit taking place at Wildhorse Resort & Casino and an update about SigmaDesign and what it’s doing at the Pendleton Unmanned Aircraft Systems Range.

Let’s also address a couple of issues about requests for coverage.

We recently had a request for a profile of a local business owner. Suggestions to report on an interesting person or happenings at a business come in often enough. The person making this suggestion told us about this owner’s background, and it sounded promising. But that business owner did not want a story, did not want to talk about their life. Without their participation, there was no story.

We want people to keep making those suggestions, but understand sometimes we can’t do the story, though not for lack of trying.

On a related note, we get requests to cover events and happenings. Too often, though, we get requests the day before or even the day of something. The newsroom operates with a small staff — three full-time news reporters and one full-time news photographer (that includes the reporter for the Hermiston Herald, our sister paper) — so last-minute requests for coverage can be difficult to accommodate. Please keep the requests coming, but the sooner we get those requests, the more likely we can cover them.

Anyone suggesting stories or making requests for coverage should email news@eastoregonian.com. We are going to see these emails. While Facebook Messenger is a popular way to communicate, we don’t spend much time looking at messages there. Please, email us before using Messenger.

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As always, we couldn’t do this without you. News gathering is a community endeavor, so we’d love to have your partnership and support for our efforts.