The Word Whisperer
During the US newspaper industry's worst crisis ever, the one additional problem we did not foresee coming was self-censorship in the United States of America.
And this kind should belong in the cartoon section instead of in an official memo coming all the way from the top of that struggling media empire known as Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and 23 TV stations, among others.
WGN-AM is located in the same Chicago building as
Tribune Co. (EPA photo)
And the memo landed like a sack of bricks on the newsroom of one of the corporation's properties, WGN-AM radio station in Chicago.
Tribune Co.'s CEO Randy Michaels, the one who's madly struggling to salvage a media giant loaded with a crushing debt, and shrinking audiences and revenues, personally ordered the station to stop using a list of 119 words.
The stunt apparently came under the guise of making the broadcasting language more "conversational" and avoiding for anchors to sound "like you're reading," as reported by Robert Feder's blog.
Robert gives us the entire list of banned words. But for those of us who witness too many devastating instances of censorship in too many autocratic countries around the world, seeing a US media institution such as Tribune Co. pulling such a cheap imitation truly breaks our hearts.
Mr. Michaels, peek out the window. It's raining red numbers. Please, leave the words alone.
And this kind should belong in the cartoon section instead of in an official memo coming all the way from the top of that struggling media empire known as Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and 23 TV stations, among others.
WGN-AM is located in the same Chicago building as
Tribune Co. (EPA photo)
And the memo landed like a sack of bricks on the newsroom of one of the corporation's properties, WGN-AM radio station in Chicago.
Tribune Co.'s CEO Randy Michaels, the one who's madly struggling to salvage a media giant loaded with a crushing debt, and shrinking audiences and revenues, personally ordered the station to stop using a list of 119 words.
The stunt apparently came under the guise of making the broadcasting language more "conversational" and avoiding for anchors to sound "like you're reading," as reported by Robert Feder's blog.
Robert gives us the entire list of banned words. But for those of us who witness too many devastating instances of censorship in too many autocratic countries around the world, seeing a US media institution such as Tribune Co. pulling such a cheap imitation truly breaks our hearts.
Mr. Michaels, peek out the window. It's raining red numbers. Please, leave the words alone.
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