Let’s say Katie Couric does occupy the Dan Rather/Walter Cronkite seat on the CBS Evening News. What difference will it make - to viewers, to the organization, to journalism?

Couric is a specialty act: the perky gal next door, at ease in all kinds of situations, as she demonstrated so well on NBC’s Today Show. But perkiness does not a news anchor make, and if she tones it down to achieve gravitas, isn’t she leaving her game in the locker room?

In other words, if you take the Katie out of the Couric, are you left with just another news reader, perhaps not as good as dozens of others might be?

And if you leave the Katie in, how long before the luster of celebrity begins to fade?

The thing that can rescue network TV news - or at least delay its demise - is reporting: original reporting on stories that truly matter in people’s daily lives. Stories about health care policy, money, war and peace, education, jobs, housing, child-rearing, globalization. Interpretive reporting that explains what’s at stake, what factors are influencing outcomes and how people can get involved.

Above all, news professionals have to go back to questioning those who wield power, no matter what the field. Too many reporters and editors have been supine in recent times, and their lack of assertiveness has allowed those in power to escape accountability.

And while the news media are at it, they need to embrace every opportunity themselves to become accountable to the public for the accuracy and fairness of their reporting.

-Gary Gilson, Minnesota News Council