EASY NEWS VS. "HARD" NEWS-- LYNDA LOPEZ INTERVIEWS JENNIFER!

We love Lynda Lopez! As the WB11 "Morning News" show's entertainment reporter, she's bringing just the right amount bounce to New York breakfast television, without saddling her segments with a lot of, you know, ideas. Yesterday she interviewed her sister Jennifer. Lynda asked what was, like, the worst part about being famous and what was the best part. Jennifer said that the worst part was "getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning for interviews like this one!" and the best part was buying clothes-- "you know how much I like clothes!"

Both girls laughed, and the screen blazed with cheer. Which is exactly what we want from a morning news show-- and why, moreover, we're not overly concerned that network news divisions are ceding all the really "hard" news to cable and dishing up more and more of the easy stuff. We think the recent efflorescence of "entertainment news," both network and cable, is the greatest thing in journalism since the 18th century Parisian salon of Madame Doublet, who sent a servant around every morning to the rich and powerful households, to ask what was new. In the afternoon, Madame Doublet and her well-connected guests would vet, amplify, and distribute the stories-- a system that evolved into one of the first important printed news networks. Now, you know that new clothes for royal mistresses were as legitimate a part of Madame Doublet's news as foreign wars and social unrest.