Viewers who tuned into ABC's "Good Morning America" during the last week of 2011 would have found the same mix of news, gossip and soft features at the usual time of the morning.
Others are of more recent invention, such as "soft news" and celebrity sports gossip.
In their private tutorials, during which Germain dispenses advice altogether more technical and specific than his classroom mantra "Read books, be curious", Germain warns Claude against such pollutants as caricature, gossip, art-catalogue soft-focus, farce, and "Barbara Cartland".
And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed.
It's a pity this ghoul of bureaucratic suspicion doesn't use the more easily understood words of "rumour" and "unfounded and malicious gossip" because that is what soft intelligence is.
Gossip just leads to more gossip so think before gossiping.
Giuliani's personal life is the stuff of endless gossip and jabs at him for being soft on morals issues are relentless.
The pub industry is intimate and gossip sodden – "everybody talks," said Mary Murphy, a small, soft-spoken woman in her 70s with a brilliant coronet of red hair.
Composed of staccato verses, a harmonious chorus and a solo middle eight, "Denial" is a Europop and soft rock song that samples "Standing in the Way of Control" by The Gossip.
The filmmaker, low-key, as is his movie's soft-spoken lead character, talked with Mekado Murphy at the Toronto International Film Festival and by phone about gossip magazines and growing up in the Cronenberg household.
