Katie Couric: a bubbly fountain of joy or the end of civilization? You decide

My friend Cheryl called me up and left a message on my answering machine.

"I know you don't watch the evening news, but Katie Couric is destroying it."

I do not, in fact, watch the evening news, which I always think of as news quickies and heartwarming crap, but Cheryl tells me it is actually pretty good. Until now, at least, when Couric has, according to her, turned the evening news into something soft and unnewsy that includes the showing of baby pictures.

I was curious what others though, and it's interesting to see the contrast. Reuters and Capitol Hill Blue hated her as much as Cheryl did, but the folks at the Los Angeles Times and some local news channel loved her for her bright, sunny disposition and even for the baby pictures.

Perhaps Cheryl was right that I was unjustly ignoring the network national news, but if Couric is a hit I imagine it will be exactly as I always imagined it to be before you know it. If you missed the show, a blogger at The Political Pit Bull has created a four-minute video of the highlights. Although we don't see as much of her legs as columnists tell me were shown during the broadcast.