Most newspapers believe they should include a good daily dose of entertainment news for readers who appreciate it. Stars and Stripes expanded its entertainment coverage -- mainly from contracted news sources -- several years ago, hoping to better serve its relatively young audience.

But any newspaper faces the question, how much such news is enough? And, what kind of entertainment news should be featured? Should it be heavy on celebrities, or on reviews of music, theater, movies? Stripes keeps a pretty good balance among different kinds of entertainment reports, in my view, but one selection angered a reader.

The long article, which ran Jan. 19, was about a bizarre video made by actor Tom Cruise for the Church of Scientology, to which he belongs. The writer, Neely Tucker of The Washington Post, spoofed the video as something so weird it could interrupt her sleep.

A letter writer, Chief Master Sgt. Alan F. Schechter (retired), from Munich, Germany, accused Stripes of "ineptitude" for running the piece. He called it a "useless rehash" and said he would have much preferred "real entertainment commentary, like who is making music, who is starring in films, who is touring when."

Alas, another writer came to Stripes' rescue a week later. James Tower of Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, said the earlier writer ought to read the New York Times, USA TODAY or The Washington Post and judge whether he likes everything in them. His point was that Stripes has to appeal to a wide cross-section of readers, and its staff "has a next-to-impossible job" doing it.

That's well-deserved praise, in my book. The Cruise article was justified, considering the stature of the star and the very public controversy over his connection with Scientology. At the same time, today's popular culture tends to push information about celebrities as, well, celebrities, more than about what they accomplish in the arts. That makes a newspaper's selection process tougher. The other, brief, articles next to the Cruise story Jan. 19 told of Jack Nicholson's love life, Eddie Murphy's quickie divorce and Lindsay Lohan's "punishment" for drunken driving: Working at Los Angeles morgue for two days.

But on the day before the Cruise article appeared and the day after, there were serious articles about the recording accomplishments of well-thought-of musical groups.