Gary Lapierre's Replacement

[Scott Fybush]

Roger Kirk wrote:
> My personal choice would have been Greg Jensen (sp?)  He's got pipes,
> style and smarts.  Delivers a hell of a newscast, too.  His on-the-fly
> parsing overcomes badly written copy and he's been handed a bunch over 
> the past few months.

I've never cared much for Gregg Jensen's delivery myself...it always 
sounds a little forced to me, almost like he's trying too hard to 
out-Gary Gary. (And as part of the small club of people who've had to 
write "Gary"-style for Gary, I feel somewhat qualified to say that only 
Gary LaPierre can get away with a lot of what Gary does on the air.)

I don't know if it's coming directly from Gregg or from the current 
writing staff there, but the last time I was listening to him on the 
air, the writing was very heavy with the sort of verbless style that Tom 
Brokaw used to overuse - "Mayor Menino promising tonight to get to the 
bottom of the latest scandal. Tom Finneran saying he won't take 
responsibility for it." Me changing the channel to someplace that uses 
verbs...

(Another frequent offender in this department, alas, is the otherwise 
commendable Keith Olbermann.)

It is also possible that I'm just very spoiled from spending the last 
couple of years working in public radio, where we try to write in 
English that's both conversational and un-gimmicky. From what I've heard 
of him on WOR and WCBS in recent years, that's about where Ed Walsh is 
coming from, too, so I'm hoping for the best with his arrival.

s
(who - shameless plug - can be heard for the rest of the week doing the 
local news breaks on WXXI AM 1370, streaming at wxxi.org, daily from 
4-6:30 PM...)