Christmas Eve -- the Holy Grail of days to bury news..

There is a truism for anyone who deals with the media: If you want your news to get covered, release that news mid-week, mid-morning, and in non-holiday weeks. For the most part, that timing fits in nicely with weekly press cycles and when reporters are likely to be looking for stories to meet deadlines.

Of course, the corollary to this truism is perhaps even more widely known: If you want your news glossed over or buried, release it at the end of the week (Friday) and in the afternoon -- if it is a holiday weekend, even better. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a good time to bury news as is any Friday afternoon. (Watch Dog has made mention of this previously on Watch Dog Silicon Valley when Mayor Chuck Reed released news on a Friday afternoon.)

Within this paradigm, the Holy Grail of days to release bad news, or news that you want people to forget about, is Christmas Eve. Why? Christmas Day is a holiday when few people read the news -- and most folks are out of touch until about a week from now or longer...

So, it is Watch Dog's job to point out times when folks are apparently trying to bury news...

Which brings us to an interesting email announcement we received today from the County of San Mateo titled:

CONTROLLER RELEASES COMPREHENSIVE ANNUAL FINANCIAL AUDIT (CAFR)

To give you an idea of what other types of things are released on Christmas Eve:

• In Texas, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today announced a public hearing for early January about the expansion of a nuclear power plant...(The NRC is obviously hoping that the news will miss most folks and therefore the meeting will go smoothly.)
  
• In D.C., the Consumer Product Safety Commission eased (eased?) lead-testing for toys...(This isn't the type of thing you want on the Evening News -- so release it on the Holy Grail of news-burying days...)
  
• In Detroit, the financing arm of General Motors -- GMAC -- has been recategorized as a bank holding company in order to get money from the already approved bail-out package for banks...(GMAC doesn't want to look even more like it is looking for a hand-out by any means necessary -- even though it is...)

So, why would the County of San Mateo Controller release this Comprehensive Annual Financial Report on Christmas Eve? Good question...even better considering it is a report of the fiscal year that ended 6 months ago, on June 30, 2008.

Watch Dog will read the report and get back to you with needed to be buried so urgently...

Also, the email was sent to a who's who of San Mateo...how does Watch Dog know? Because the email addresses for all the recipients were (mistakenly?) included in the email. Oops...Watch Dog is just happy to be included... although I'm pretty sure we'll be taken off the esteemed list after this post...