what J-School can't teach...

.. family connections. You know where this is going.

Former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager has just been hired by NBC's Today Show to be a regular education correspondent, HuffPo (and others) reports.

Among her qualifications, says Executive Producer Jim Bell: her communication skills.

She "just sort of popped to us as a natural presence, comfortable" on the air, Bell said. Hager will work out of NBC's Washington bureau.

"I think she can handle it," he said. "I think she knows something about pressure and being under some scrutiny. When she came here for a handful of appearances, she knocked it out of the park."

He expects her first story, most likely concerning education, to be on sometime next month.

A first television job on "Today" is, in her father's world, sort of like a run for president as a first attempt at elective office. Hager said that people on the show "have always made me, whenever I've been there, feel very comfortable."

Not to be a party-pooper, but I can't help wondering where she learned how to report. Or isn't that necessary anymore? As Salon's Glenn Greenwald suggests, at a time when actual journalists are losing jobs right and left, this new hire may be just the latest sign of the American public's hunger for royalty. That's something J-schools just can't teach. bk