It looks like JoJo is about to embark on yet another new chapter!
Yesterday afternoon, we learned that three-time Ogle Madness finalist Joleen Chaney – the primetime KFOR news anchor turned public school PR flack – is out as Communications chief for Oklahoma Department of Education.
We discovered this after an Ogle mole sent this auto-reply to an email that was sent JoJo’s way:
Yep. That’s right. Pour a little watermelon moonshine out for a homie!
Just two months after she left the TV news biz for health reasons, only to suddenly accept a high-profile, high-stress, $150K-a-year state agency gig a few days later, Joleen Chaney is vaguely "no longer with" the Oklahoma Department of Education.
Obviously, the main question here is what exactly happened. I don't know the correct answers to those questions, but I do know...
As we reported back in an early Dumpster Fire, Joleen wasn’t adapting well to non-teleprompter life. In addition to that, I’m hearing she – like a lot of people at the Capitol – didn’t gel well with Lindell Field’s chief of staff, Tom Newell. When you combine all that with the gig possibly being more demanding and stressful than Joleen probably expected, I guess she had enough and simply quit.
Well, at least that's what I'm hearing.
If any of that’s true, and I’d bet some of it is, good for JoJo. I think we all want to get to the point in life where we can say take your $150K job and shove it, and she did exactly that. Now she can get back to doing what she was always meant to do – tossing watermelons into the back of pickup trucks.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see where Joleen pops up next on the career trail.
Will she be the lead in a reboot of Discover Oklahoma, serve as a spokesperson for OG&E, or – as one Ogle Mole speculated – resurface in the Stitt camp? Who knows. Whatever path she takes in this new chapter, we wish her the best-best.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
