Eulogy for TV news. Quick, name the three anchors for ABC, NBC and CBS. Stumped? Well, you’re not alone, and the reason goes beyond the fact that Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather left their jobs at about the same time.

The death of Jennings to lung cancer brings down the curtain on an era in TV news when knowledge, seriousness and hard work marked the path to the coveted anchor position. The blurring of the lines between entertainment and news has undermined the credibility of all newscasts and yielded the superficial and often silly broadcasts that dominate the news channels today.

The irony is that while the number of news outlets has expanded the quality of broadcasts has contracted. Serious national and international news has been crowded out to make way for celebrity trials, entertainment reports and personal melodrama.

Jennings was cool, calm and detached. He rewarded viewers for having a brain. He was the antithesis of what we see today. Rest in peace.

The road to fruition. Hallelujah, the end is near – of one construction project, that is.

After a year of annoying detours and a torn up road, the city of Coeur d’Alene will soon complete the construction of two miles of Government Way, converting two lanes into five from the bridge over Interstate 90 northward. And that’s cause for celebration. The long-suffering business owners along the stretch who survived the lengthy inconvenience will do just that on Saturday when they throw a block party from noon to 5 p.m. on the new roadway.

Good for them. Their persistence in the face of a heavy toll the road work extracted on their business is admirable. The new road should attract more customers, transforming the last year of bust into a boom. But celebrants should be careful not to get carried away with their merriment. Anyone test-driving the new Government Way will discover that the bridge over the freeway is out. It has been demolished as part of another construction project.

See us back here in 18 months.