Is Nightline Worth Anything Anymore?

It used to be that when there was a crisis of some sort, you could tune into Nightline for interviews with some of the newsmakers involved. Ted Koppel didn't hit a home run every time by any means, but there was often some sort of illumination of the issue at hand. Since Koppel has left, they rarely do interviews anymore (and to be completely honest, I don't remember the last interview I've seen on the show, but since I don't watch it obsessively, it's possible that I've missed one or two along the way). You may have heard something about the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and indeed, Nightline led with a report from John Donvan on the ground in Beirut. But since they've got to fit three stories into an episode, we only got seven or eight minutes tops. The second story was about a stem-cell/embryo clinic, which is at least timely, given the Prez's first-ever veto. It was an odd diversion into domestic politics, though, given that they returned to Beirut for the final segment. But this wasn't just more from John Donvan. No, Nightline looked for an angle that hadn't been covered, and, at least as far as I'm aware, they found it: a look at the crisis through the frame of Time Out Beirut. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the club scene seems to have shut down entirely. As editor-in-chief Ramsey Short pointed out, it'll be a while before Mariah Carey or Phil Collins wander back into town. Surely the situation isn't any less dire or tragic for the staff of an entertainment magazine than it is for anybody else currently in Lebanon, but it does seem an odd tack to take for a news program. At least Nightline didn't use the insipid tag line that it's a "sign of the times," but perhaps in this case, it truly is.

The Website is far, far worse. As I write this, I can find very little actual news on the site, because there's no room with all the fluff jammed in there. Some of the current featured stories include consumers fighting back via the Internet, a group of blind and vision-impaired students climbing to Machu Picchu, and "Frankenpups," which are apparently made-to-order mixed-breed dogs. Don't worry--they don't ignore the Middle East entirely. Further down the page is a link to a story called, "Baghdad's Lionel Richie Obsession." What happened to this show? And, perhaps more mystifyingly, why do I continue to turn it on?