Bumblers Need Not Apply

[Flanders]

If you want to earn a living writing the English language it matters not what you write so long as you write it well. One would think that if you want to earn a living speaking it matters not what you speak so long as you speak it well. If print journalists wrote as badly as 7 out of 10 people on television speak they would be permanently unemployed.

Question: Do the companies who hire people to speak ever check qualifications before they hire them? Answer: Apparently not. No machine shop would hire a machinist who did not know how to use a lathe, yet television give talkers a microphone when they cannot speak a complete sentence without stuttering, pausing after every two words, talking through their nose, or shooting off like a Gatling gun.

And where in hell did television voices get their timbre? Certainly not from the same place radio voices got theirs.

I gave up on the actors in entertainment shows a long time ago. The soundtrack in most theater movies produced in the last 30 years that run on television are unbearable. On the other hand, somebody should tell television talkers on news shows to study the great big band vocalists. Selling the news is no different than selling a song. Bumblers can learn a lot from this sample:

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