- A doozy from Matt Potter in the Reader this week. Check out the results of his public records request to the Mayor’s Office. Seems that the director of the Office of Ethics and Integrity, Jo Anne SawyerKnoll – whose role and bloated budget has confused me for a year now – is going on a self-promotion tour.
She has put together a “communications plan” that includes a laundry list of outreach to local radio, television and newspaper editors who might publicize her specifically. She’s angling to get on TV, get on San Diego Magazine’s “50 People to Watch” list and perhaps ghostwrite a few editorials for people around the community.
That particular public relations tactic can backfire.
According to Potter, SawyerKnoll is apparently also envisioning what could possibly be the best bit of exposure for herself:
A calendar of events to be promoted under the plan includes this month’s “One-year anniversary of Jo Anne SawyerKnoll appointment as Deputy Chief,” to be marked by an “editorial briefing” with the U-T, a mention on the Voice of San Diego‘s website, and publicity in “community papers in JAS neighborhood, hometown.”
I’ll make sure her one-year anniversary gets a mention. With a budget crunch of historical proportions coming down on the city, SawyerKnoll is going to have a tough time convincing skeptics like me that her office is worth $1.4 million when it still hasn’t offered anything more substantive than this.
- CityBeat’s Eric Wolff wrote a good piece in this week’s issue telling two stories about two separate home invasions in two separate neighborhoods.
A lot of us were startled by the Oct. 15 home invasion in Mission Beach in which the assailants not only burglarized the home but sexually assaulted the two young women inside. Wolff told the story of another home invasion in Chula Vista a couple of days earlier. The idea was to compare and contrast the two. He makes the mistake of trying to teach a lesson rather than simply telling two good stories. But it’s a good read.
On that point, a while back, I meant to tell anyone who hadn’t noticed it to read Tony Manolatos’ great follow up to the Mission Beach incident in the Union-Tribune.