Ban these words!

I'm working on a list of words we'd like to see banned (as a journalist, I really don't like that word, but what the heck! Yes, banned!). Send me your suggestions. I'm starting with these three:

• Sorry. As in, I'm sorry I cheated on my wife, I'm sorry I'm an idiot and shot myself in the leg with an unlicensed, LOADED gun... that kind of thing.
• Unique. There are an awful lot of unique things out there.. but i think that's a contradicition in terms.
• Transparency. Enough already! I don't want to see it, don't want to hear about it. Get back in your smoke filled room and get some work done!

What are the words you want to add to this list?

Buy one anyway? High hoot value!

I love the news business but in the same spirit as the 12-step post that doesn't mean I have to love the medium. So this tongue-in-cheek video, created by Slate V, is a hoot. Journalist or not, you've gotta laugh. To find out more about who's who in this particular zoo, click here.

The newspaper 12-step program

An alcoholic in recovery gives up all the things that remind them of their past life. They throw out their "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor!" t-shirts, they replace the Jim Beam medallion on their key ring with the serenity prayer and they don't ever risk getting the "taste for it" back by even trying a non-alcoholic beer or a piece of amaretto cheesecake. All these things perpetuate the idea that I'm still a drinker and so they cast off that skin as the first step to changing their lives.

Ah, but what are we going to do with newspapers? No wonder the newspaper can't find a new identity when even their name forces them to hold onto the past. Newspaper.

It's not surprising that the newspaper's identity is all wrapped up in the physical - that's our history, our roots, what made us great. It harkens back to patriots printing dissenting views and fomenting revolt against the British in small, dark colonial print shops. It's a glorious history, now tarnishing and trying, painfully, to survive.

But we're stuck with this moniker. We have newspaper companies, operating newspapers, selling newspaper advertising and, even more bizarrely, operating newspaper web sites.

Other transforming industries don't have this same problem.

The central product of the book publishing industry is a book - it may be a hard cover edition, a paper back, an ebook or a digital book. But it is still a book. If printed books went away tomorrow, the industry would not have to battle the identity crisis of losing its essence.

No industry has transformed quite as much in the just the past decade as the music industry. And it's a good thing that they knew their central product was the music and not the record, tape, or CD that the music was recorded onto. The loneliest places in the country today must be record stores. Are there even still record stores?

But then there are newspapers where even our name evokes the ink-on-paper albatross that is dragging the industry rather than allowing it to transform. A few years ago, Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper company, realigned and renamed its divisions. What had been the Newspaper Division was renamed to...

The Community Newspaper Division. Gannett missed an opportunity to rebrand its identity and jettison the paper. Some larger newspapers have tried to brand themselves as media groups made up of websites, magazines and newspapers. That's a step in the right direction, but it is more for show than actually a sea change in attitude.

So much of the industry's identity is wrapped up in the medium rather than the product that we can't really see past it. Bloggers say "Newspapers are Dying" and we need to "Save Newspapers". And we worry that journalism won't survive because it appears inexorably linked to the medium.

It's time for this industry to admit that it is spiraling out of control and needs to get in a program. So here's 12-step program for newspapers.

1. Admit that we are powerless over the changing market conditions and that holding onto the past has become unmanageable.

2. Believe that we are a dying industry because our customers have found us irrelevant. Honestly, that's the ultimate reason.

3. Make a decision to evolve not devolve. We will stop acting like the sky is falling!

4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves. Admit that we have completely given up most real journalism, that we are afraid to be hard hitting and that we have deeply buried all the greatness that made us indespensible. News flash: Readers have noticed this!

5. Admit to our readers that we have only given lipservice to involving them in the news gathering process. We have created forums so they could talk - to each other - not help us shape the direction of what we were covering. Most days we don't even look at that stuff.

6. We know that these defects in our character are a big part of what is dragging us down and we are ready - really ready - to change.

7. Time to remove the dead wood. We know that the future of news has a smaller footprint, so, yes, there are going to be reductions in the work force. In many cases, that dead wood sits at the top of the tree. Start hacking away - hack being the operative word here.

8. Make a list of the values that defined the news industry: inquisitiveness, skepticism, intelligence, public service, honesty, objectivity. And admit that most newspapers long ago traded those in for revenue, quick hit, easy, non-threatening, feature, good-news pap.

9. Recognize that failure to maintain Step 8 is why you are irrelevant today. That irrelevance is why readers are abandoning you in droves. That abandonment - as well as your greed - is why advertisers have slipped away. Quod erat demonstratum.

10. Accept the fact that greed is killing you. 40% profit margins are a thing of the past. Accept it and move on. If you can't get this step down, you may still be doomed!

11. Stop whining. Newspapers have been wringing their hands over lost readership since the end of World War II, when the decline started. And in the past 50 years have done very little to change the trend. In 2000, Gary Watson, then president of the Newspaper Division, told a NEXPO audience that we were not in the newspaper business; we are in the information business. Bold words repeated by executives over and over in meeting rooms and conference speeches from San Francisco to Manhattan. But words only have power when they empower action. Stop whining and start changing!

12. Take the paper out of newspaper. Change the moniker and really believe it. You are holding onto a past that is never coming back and good riddance. Step up and lead or get out of the way.

Oh, yeah, and throw out that "Journalists do it dirty" t-shirt.