San Mateo County Gets New Spokes-Hole

SMCO Spokes-Hole

According to San Mateo County's website (pdf), the County has hired a new spokes-hole to help them develop "communications strategies for a wide variety of projects and initiatives and identifying new ways to help San Mateo County deliver its goals of collaboration and transparency."

She is Michelle Durand, long time reporter with the San Mateo Daily Journal; a paper which has long seemed to be skeptical of our criticisms of San Mateo County's handling of some of the more controversial sex crimes cases against former County employees and contractors, and which appears to routinely use tear-sheets from the County District Attorney as the basis for accurate reporting, rather than digging into the stories directly.


Michelle tells us that she has "spent nearly 14 years telling San Mateo County’s stories and this position is another opportunity to continue doing so."


What a Sage was good old George:

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

― George Orwell