Q. \u2013 Where did the idea for the book come from?<\/p>\n
A. \u2013 I\u2019ve always been interested in words and their usage.\u00a0 I learned to appreciate correct usage as a disc jockey starting in the early \u201870s and it extended into my college teaching experiences.\u00a0 As an exercise with my students, we began collecting examples of misused and mispronounced words and phrases and discussing them in class.\u00a0 It went from a list to a handout to a pamphlet and finally to the current version after nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n
Q. \u2013 But you seemed to know very early how important correct language usage is to mass media.<\/p>\n
A. \u2013 Well, that\u2019s true, but I was fortunate enough to know what my career direction was early, in high school, in fact.\u00a0 I wanted a career in broadcasting and I began paying attention to the way local announcers and disc jockeys communicated early on.<\/p>\n
Q. \u2013 Did you study media in college?<\/p>\n
A. \u2013 Yes, I got my degree from San Francisco State University in the late \u201860s.\u00a0 It\u2019s always had an excellent communications department.\u00a0 My concentration was in radio, but there was a heavy emphasis on television and particularly on the aesthetics of mass media.\u00a0 But with the Viet Nam war and all the student protests, it was a tough time to be in school.\u00a0 I was never much of a student, but by this time I had matured and was eager to learn about my major.\u00a0 We all lost a lot of valuable time because of cancelled classes.<\/p>\n
Q. \u2013 What was the primary inspiration for\u00a0Now You\u2019re Talkin\u2019<\/em>?<\/p>\n A. \u2013 Oh, probably just my crotchety nature!\u00a0 Or maybe as I\u2019ve aged, I\u2019ve become less patient with the young people I see on TV and their casual approach to communication, to mass media.\u00a0 Some of that professionalism that I valued as a young guy myself seems to be missing these days.\u00a0 There are a lot of mistakes being made by people who have sought to be our spokespeople and as a result I\u2019ve noticed a diminished integrity in the broadcast industry.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 Well, you\u2019ve made it a point to emphasize professional credibility.<\/p>\n A. \u2013 Absolutely!\u00a0 That\u2019s all any of us have to represent us professionally, if you think about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s our credibility.\u00a0 Why should anyone pay attention to those of us who have chosen to communicate as a profession and then treat language so cavalierly?\u00a0 It\u2019s part of developing the skill.\u00a0 I suppose a lot of it stems from the way technology has allowed us to communicate in a more casual manner these days, but I feel were a lot worse off for it.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 Where\u2019d you get your first job?<\/p>\n A \u2013 I got my first class FCC license from Ogdon\u2019s in Huntington Beach in 1969 and ended up that summer in Modesto at KTRB, which was a pioneering radio station with a long history in the central valley.\u00a0 About the time I joined the staff, a lot of other young guys were being hired there and we learned from one another.\u00a0 That was the cool part of working there.\u00a0 We were young, idealistic, prone to mistakes, but we had a great camaraderie and there was a real family atmosphere.\u00a0 It was a terrific experience.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 But you moved from radio into television.<\/p>\n A. \u2013 Well, I was at KTRB for about five years before I moved back to Sacramento where I was raised.\u00a0 I worked in radio for awhile, but after a few years got into TV working for an independent station, KTXL TV40.\u00a0 It\u2019s the Fox affiliate now.\u00a0 That was a great place back then.\u00a0 I wrote and produced commercials and special events, did a lot of announcing, then moved over to the CBS affiliate in town doing about the same thing.\u00a0 Then in the mid-\u201880s, I got a chance to teach part-time at the community college level.\u00a0 So I taught some history classes, announcing classes, TV studio technique, and it was about this time that the book began to take form.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 Did you stay in broadcasting throughout your career?<\/p>\n A. \u2013 No.\u00a0 My teaching experiences got me a job as a trainer with IBM Global Services teaching a computer application designed to manage Child Protective Services cases throughout the state.\u00a0 So I was a full-time trainer for about 10 years teaching soft skills, business seminars, and, later, telephone equipment for Pacific Bell which became SBC and eventually AT&T once again.\u00a0 \u2018Different names for the same organization, but it was a good job.\u00a0 Most recently I worked for the State of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 You worked in a prison?<\/p>\n A. \u2013 Actually, yes, for a short time anyway.\u00a0 But after a couple of years, I transferred to the Office of Correctional Education and retired from there at the end of 2011.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 So, it sounds like you had to quit working to get your book published.<\/p>\n A. \u2013 That\u2019s true!\u00a0 It actually took about 30 years to compile the information, but I finally got serious about making it into a book in the summer of 2007.\u00a0 Publishing\u00a0Now You\u2019re Talkin\u2019<\/em>\u00a0turned out to be my first post-retirement project.<\/p>\n Q. \u2013 What\u2019s next, then?\u00a0 \u2018Any other books?<\/p>\n A. \u2013 Oh, well, maybe.\u00a0 I\u2019ve enjoyed writing short stories and essays based on my experiences as a kid growing up or little episodes in my life.\u00a0 I\u2019ve written a couple dozen and I\u2019m being encouraged to put them together.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve got other things going on.\u00a0 I perform in a band; a classic rock band with a horn section that plays a lot of Chicago and Tower of Power-inspired material.\u00a0 It\u2019s a large band called On Air.\u00a0 There are 11 musicians.\u00a0 We\u2019re pretty active especially in the spring and summer.\u00a0 Plus there\u2019s a bucket list of places we want to go including the Panama Canal, so I intend to stay quite busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Q. \u2013 Where did the idea for the book come from? A. \u2013 I\u2019ve always been interested in words and their usage.\u00a0 I learned to appreciate correct usage as a disc jockey starting in the early \u201870s and it extended into my college teaching experiences.\u00a0 As an exercise with my students, we began collecting examples […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":118,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-169","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/169\/revisions\/180"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boblang.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}