Tamara Barak Aparton got more than than she expected when she left the San Francisco Examiner for a post with San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s office. The former reporter found that, far from being the dry, staid environment one might expect in city government, California’s only elected Public Defender encouraged his new public information officer to be creative. This week, Aparton tells us how humor can engage the public, what she’s learned from a career that’s ping-ponged between newspapers and public relations, some of the ways writers and journalists can survive and thrive in a constantly changing media landscape, and how, in a different universe, she and Bridget were best friends in high school.