Is Twitter reviving news?

With Jay Leno's departure from The Tonight Show on NBC, the scramble for his late-night television audience is on -- and, according to Bill Carter of The New York Times, it looks as though some of that may be going to news.

News? What's that?

It's the stuff they have on ABC's Nightline, the news magazine born of the Iran hostage crisis during the Carter Administration and anchored ably for so long by Ted Koppel. As good as he was, Koppel was never quite as funny Leno or David Letterman of CBS's Late Show.

Entertainment seems to trump information nearly every time. When the information concerns entertainment, though, the door opens a crack, and that's what happened with the death of singer Michael Jackson.

Nightline capitalized on the connection of one of its anchors, Martin Bashir, who had conducted a memorable interview with the pop star. It also capitalized on the social network Twitter, where 800,000 people now follow the show.

Won't it be interesting if Michael Jackson ends up moonwalking the public back to being engaged with what's going on in their world.