Is news really news these days? Or has news become nothing more than an extension of gossip and the entertainment shows?

I just looked at the morning headlines. It's about the TV show Dancing With The Stars, and about Kim Kardashian, and about a teen losing 85-pounds, and of course the latest surrounding the sex scandal at Penn State.

News is definitely different today. I don't recall in the 1950s seeing on the TV news who was crowned Queen For A Day with host Jack Bailey?

Celebrity weddings on the news in the 1950s and 1960s? Well, yes, Elizabeth Taylor's marriage and divorce, and marriage and divorce, and marriage and divorce, and marriage and divorce, and... oh yes, they made the news but nothing like today's coverage of Kim Kardashian's marriage and divorce.

Perhaps the problem is that we have too much news? I remember when in the 1970s the news was limited to a half hour at 6pm and 11pm for local news and a half hour at 6:30pm for network news. Yes, there were morning news shows from the networks that went for a couple of hours but Hughes Rudd on CBS wouldn't make much small talk. And Sally Quinn was the "softer edge" when beautiful Lesley Stahl wasn't reporting hard news from Congress. Look at this clip of the news below:



Of course those were the days of Watergate and war in Vietnam. But besides Watergate it's when news was important and news made judgments about what should be covered and not just covering things that would fall into reporters' laps because public relations agents put it there. I remember the news promotional phrase "all the news you need to know." No one promotes ideas and themes like that anymore.