Journalists have long pitied those colleagues who suffer under the yoke of Michael Bloomberg henchman Matthew Winkler. A style guide put together by the wire service boss-a program to reeducate journalists by the cultish name of the 'Bloomberg Way'-forbids the use of but and pretty much any other word which might convey meaning and opinion. But Bloomberg News' battered reporters and editors do at least have one escape: defection from the wire service is punished by excommunication but it is notionally possible. Editor-in-chief Winkler's offspring don't have that option, however. An unwise publicist has allowed the notorious style nazi to give an interview to the Columbia Journalism Review. It's clear why he's allowed out in public so rarely: the famously shouty Winkler has not mellowed; and he reveals that he inflicted the Bloomberg Way on his two unfortunate sons.

So all I'm saying is for people who understand what we're trying to do here-and again my son who you just met who walked out the door when you showed up and who's a student at Columbia University-okay?-and got eight fives on eight APs-okay?-he took the Bloomberg Way in high school, and if you ask him he'll tell you the Bloomberg Way was the single best thing that he used to teach him how to write, and when he got to Columbia University, he said he could write an essay a lot better than other people, and "I gotta tell you, dad, it's because of what the Bloomberg Way did for me," and his older brother went to Swarthmore, who is even more distinguished as an academic, did the same thing, so I did try this out on a bunch of kids, okay? And they didn't find it confining, and they didn't find it you know restricting.

[CJR: The Winkler Way-Okay?]