The national debt is not usually news.

Except when it's not increased by the time the government's existing debt ceiling is reached and the Treasury has to do some interesting things to manage cash flow, federal borrowing is seldom widely reported. When it is, it's usually only of interest to Wall Street and mentioned mostly by financial outlets like Bloomberg, Marketplace, CNBC, etc.

This has been especially the case in recent years as the White House has tried to dampen public and media interest in anything having to do with the budget, fiscal policy, and federal finances. By not talking about it, the administration has tried to convince everyone that it's not an issue.

Which is why the series of feature reports this week on the CBS Evening NewsWith Katie Couric on "Life and Debt in America" have been so surprising. Even though there's no precipitating event or news to report, CBS decided that the topic will be of enough interest to make it worthwhile to devote considerable time and significant resources not just to one but to a series of relatively long (at least by evening news standards) reports on various aspects of the topic.

The reports so far have not been earth shattering. But they are important nonetheless simply because millions of people who have not recently (or perhaps ever) thought about government borrowing are now hearing about it.

This assumes, of course, that they didn't change channels when the reports came on to watch that repeat of Friends or Seinfeld again.