Former San Mateo Times Managing Editor Michelle Carter has been named to the same position for Zirana.com, a new online community news organization. The announcement was made by Zirana CEO Sanjiv Sahay from the company’s headquarters at 1340 S. De Anza Blvd., Suite 104, San Jose.

“Michelle brings a lot of relevant experience to Zirana, as it grows into a digital media platform covering local communities across the globe,” Sahay said.

The company was founded earlier this year and now has 240 community news sites up and running. Zirana expects to cover more than 1,000 communities by the end of this year.

Carter left The Times in 1995 to accept a grant from the United States Information Agency to work with newspaper editors in Russia for a year. She continued work with newspapers in emerging democracies of the former Soviet Union and former Soviet bloc countries until 2002 when she began teaching journalism and communication at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. She is retiring as a core faculty member and adviser to The Argonaut, the student newspaper, this spring. She is also a past president of the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club and an active member of its board of directors. Carter and her husband, Mike Venturino, live in Belmont.