This is one of the loopiest things I've read in quite awhile. WGN CEO Randy Michaels has decided that certain words (119 certain words) need to be taken out of the mouths of his news folk. In a memo he circulated to staff, he's forbidding words left and right in order to make the news readers sound more like they are talking instead of reading.
Can we get real here? Everyone knows that news readers are reading, so what's the point? I don't know.
Anyway, you can go here and see the entire list if you want to, but I warn you, you'll scratch your head at some of the choices.
And in case you want a funnier way of reviewing the list, you can check this out. BoingBoing links to a NPR blogger's use of all the banned words in one sentence.
Here's an excerpt:
"He lent a helping hand to a legendary incarcerated pedestrian lone gunman (the perpetrator who over in a neighboring state, perished in a perfect storm of no brainers and things that went terribly wrong, and was plagued by killing sprees in which he gave 110% only to have his senseless murders marred by the untimely deaths of guys and folks whose fatal deaths came in the wake of auto accidents...."
