Re(2): Current Events Posted on January 16, 2026 at 00:35:17 AM by just sayin
You didn't GET it, Jason. Jim wrote that, cramming evry informal slang he remembers me saying in 1 sentence. I think he was writing what experienced journalists would call a parody. Peeps, cuz, prolly, just sayin. I said 'prolly just once and he picked up on it and includes it now in all his phony posts.
It would be more effective if he was a night time comedian mocking my mannerisms, voice and accent but he's neither funny nor that talented. Besides he's used to radio, not television.
I AM an experienced journalist and that's a fact. He or anybody can call me a rip and reader because for a year at WHB back in the day, that's what they paid me to do. But lasted only a year, waiting to get out of there for a better gig. I'd worked at a news operation on a rocker and my writing was informal and conversational because that was my audience. Delivery is a contrived style for news people, usually to establish credibility images on TV...how they turn to their coanchors, where to put their hands, when to look happy, tragic, sad when reading those kinds of stories. It's show business and may are just show anchors. Then others with journalistic roots take on the showbiz style but are still journalists. Want to tell one from the other? Watch em on election nights or doing breaking cutins with no PrompTer...the journalism part comes right out if they're experienced.
Im confident I couldn't do the show biz credibility but field reporters mostly narrate scripts they write after interviewing and generating coherent stories. Some are better than others, and yes, it takes plenty of practice.
I'm quick to admit I wrote and sounded better than I looked. My view is that it's best to BE a journalist and not just Look the part of Max Headroom with nothing in your head.
Only sometimes on social media do I write informally. The night the skater girls drowned in the Potomac at the end of Reagan National's runway, I watched live TV and Not doing play by play on my social sites, I switched very quickly into news anchor mode, kinda just because that's what the story called for.
I heard Noel Heckerson, a friend and news trading partner with me, do the same thing when the twin towers were hit. He did the same thing exactly, watched live network coverage and anchored on KMBZ. He did very very well. Noel was a pro and he traded stories with me almost every day and I was good enough for this market so much that Johnny Dolan offered me a job at WHB. Yeah, even if I looked a little dorky, but again you can be fat and greasy on the radio and no one knows you're really a cocker spaniel! The Wolfman looked pretty rough too in person, but he was the persona he wanted to be. Replies: