Tribune CEO Totally Changing the Game

I’m not totally opposed to the list of words and phrases banned by for use on WGN radio by Tribune CEO Randy Michaels (a gentleman just described by a former Tribune employee as “crazy/evil.”) Some of his banned words are clearly just weird pet peeves of his (“famed”? “diva”? “false pretenses”?) but others-”under siege”! “under fire”!-are the sad things you hear endlessly if you ever turn on talk radio, which of course you don’t, because if you’re reading a blog you’re probably not a full-time cab driver. What’s really fascinating is that this list has almost no overlap with the list of words you should never use in writing. But then when do newscasters ever actually say “arguably”? Sad though that Michaels’ toady, WGN’s news director Charlie Meyerson, then instituted a system in which coworkers will rat each other out for using any of these 119 words and phrases. Can you imagine the stress of trying not to say 119 things while babbling about nothing?