Earlier this month, we were first on the scene and on the story to report that Storme Jones – the once-rising reporter, anchor, and good Samaritan for News 9 – parted ways with the locally owned news channel.
According to the Ogle Mole Network, things between Storme and News 9 had gone sideways like a heavy rain since his lateral-at-best move from the morning couch to the afternoon anchor desk. As a result, Storme asked to be released from his contract, and the channel happily obliged.
At the time, we dreamed of a scenario where KFOR would scoop up Storme and pair him with Dylan Brown to form the "In Your Corner Boys" – a rough-and-tumble duo of hard-knock investigative reporters who break all the rules when hunting down bad contractors, landlords, and baby portrait photographers.
Instead, it appears Storme has gone the more secure route that most former news anchors and reporters take when leaving the biz – government communications.
Specifically, like most storms hitting central Oklahoma, Storme has touched down in Cleveland County. We learned this last week after an Ogle Mole shared this KOCO report about the squabble between Cleveland County and its incompetent sheriff,
"State law says the Cleveland County sheriff should resign for breaking his budget, but he said he wasn’t the only person responsible for the budget…
An ongoing state audit shows Amason got the funds he was supposed to last year, and now the county claims he isn’t budgeting properly.
'Anyone with a budget understands that when you have a budget, you can’t exceed that budget. In fact, it’s in the state constitution, and there’s a law that says elected officials cannot exceed their budget,' said Storme Jones, director of communications for Cleveland County.
State law said county officers or employees who go into a budget deficit have to “forfeit his office or position.”
Yep, that’s right.
Storme Jones has left the overworked, long-hour, early wake-up-call field of TV news to work in the cozy confines of county government.
If that sounds crazy, just wait until you hear this: He’s also apparently changed his name to Storm!
Whether it’s Storme, Storm, or Stormy, it’s still crazy to me that News 9 let him float away like a mobile home hit by a tornado. The guy seemed solid at his job, especially when serving as a live, breaking news reporter, but I guess running off good local talent is how “Oklahoma’s Own” now operates.
Seriously, I know the news sets they’re building every couple of years cost the Griffin family a pretty syrup-drenched penny, but it’s hard to fathom that just four years after Storme and his former News 9 colleague Aaron Brilbeck were dodging rubber bullets and tear gas canisters during OKC’s minor-league George Floyd protest-riot-demonstrations, they’re both now working in county government.
It makes you wonder what's next—Sassy Mama becoming the culinary director for the Canadian County jail? Pottawatomie County naming Val Caster their new Chief Snowplow Operator?
It will be interesting to see how the Storme Jones county government experiment works out.
I wonder if he’ll anchor his own self-produced "Cleveland County News" segment, or maybe even bring aboard wise old Cleveland County sage Gan Matthews as a mentor and advisor. Gan’s always been fond of smart, intelligent people, so I bet he’d do the job for free.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
