Crutch phrases have a tendency to take over your vernacular like weeds in a garden, when you don’t take the time daily to grab them by the roots and remove them from interfering with the fruits of your labor.

Just as a farmer, or gardener would protect its crops for the good of the final product, communicators, broadcasters, jocks and podcasters should be protecting their habits of speech in the same manner.

ver·nac·u·lar


[vərˈnakyələr]
NOUN
1. (the vernacular)
   the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region:
   
   "he wrote in the vernacular to reach a larger audience"
   synonyms:
   everyday language · spoken language · colloquial speech

Ten years ago, the phrase ‘just saying,’ had reached critical mass -- being used by everyone from comedians to major market broadcast talents to put an exclamation mark at the end of a point they were attempting to make. The problem with that phrase is it was an easy way out of any discussion, break or point, as opposed to finding the most effective way out, just saying.

A listener wouldn’t know to care about you, unless, at some point you reached them emotionally, through heart or through humor. So, when WKKT (96.9 The Kat)/Charlotte morning personality, Sarah Lee, went live on Facebook to share something odd that had just ...

The first time I was paid for supplying content for another station or program was in 1994 when I was the night jock in Syracuse at 93Q, using the moniker, ‘The Ragman,’ a name given to me in 1987 by Dave Richards, now flying high with Audacy. My ratings ...

Cocaine and Crown Royal, the story of a morning talent in Chicago, sharing on-air his wild party days. When talents share personally, if effective, it should take us to a time in our own lives, whether reminding us of something that happened to us, or a brother, cousin, ...

There is a saying, “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure,” and mostly that comes down to one thing. The beholder has no concept of the value of that which lies in their possession. In mid-2015, I arrived in Nashville to program the Way-FM ...

It was a TV host reel of then Univision Radio hosts Lulu and Lala which first got my attention in 2012 because they were maximizing their screen time with celebrities, allowing them to plug their projects like every other host on the row, while going toe-to-toe with them ...

Who could have conceived that a little movie about some dead baseball players and a father- son relationship could have spawned a real baseball game 30+ years later, just adjacent to the very corn fields of dreams that the movie was filmed on in Iowa? There’s an ...

MyKayla Skinner is a name you may have never known. She was already enroute back to America as an alternate gymnast when she got a call saying, “Come back, we need you.” Her efforts were good as gold and earned her the silver medal as the last-minute replacement to ...

Even as I’ve aged to half of a century, one thing remains with my heart and soul. I still want to belong. I still want purpose and I still want to make a difference. At the end of 2020, my wife and I bought her dream car, a 2021 Jeep Wrangler. Within hours of posting ...

She was only 10 years old, unassuming, on her way to school, a typical day for young Jenn Bostic whose dad was at the wheel. Nobody could have known that mere car lengths ahead in the upcoming intersection, life would let go like a truckload of lemons whose pallets gave ...