Profiles in Courage: Katie Couric

Whenever you log out of Hotmail, you're rerouted to msn.com, which I'd like to believe is the only way anyone ever ends up at msn.com, but I doubt if that's true. Among their top stories today is an interview with Katie Couric in which she discusses her transition from hosting Today to anchoring the CBS evening news. The tag line - and opening sentence - of the article is, "It's a little harder than I thought it would be." Well, I would hope it's a little harder since, a., her last job was segueing between celebrity chefs, remarkable pet anecdotes and the least informative weather report east of the Rockies; and, b., it's a promotion. Promotions are supposed to be harder. That's why they pay you more money.

It should also probably alarm readers that it's only "a little harder" and not a lot harder. It is the evening news on a major television network, after all. This is, ostensibly, where most Americans get their news. One would hope that the job entails a great deal of hard work and responsibility, the news anchor serving as a gateway between the viewing public and all the, you know, information in the world.

Sadly, though, I doubt if it really is much different from any other job in television. Jimmy Kimmel or Emeril Lagasse could probably step into the anchor's chair just as easily. The news broadcasts that once, supposedly, informed the public now just serve to pacify and entertain them, striving to entice advertisers and hand off a sizable audience share to the eight o'clock sitcoms and reality shows. Much of what passes for news is simply reality-based entertainment; a few hours spent watching CNN Headline News will confirm this. The two criteria a story must meet before going to air are: a. it really happened, and b. it was caught on video. This leads to, for example, CNN's disproportionate coverage of random cat-in-tree stories in Georgia, where their Atlanta-based helicopters are readily deployable. And, of course, the mainstream media's glut of stories about... the mainstream media.

Remember a time when newscasters were the ones who read the news instead of the ones who were the news? Well neither can I, but I'm young. To watch television regularly, though, one would believe that the biggest thing to happen in the world since Katie Couric took over as CBS anchor is that Katie Couric took over as CBS anchor. I wonder if one day Tom Junod will be profiled by some other fledgling journalist for his insightful coverage of the ongoing Katie Couric saga. Probably not, since he gets to put "by Tom Junod" on this story despite its consisting of nothing but what appears to be an entry in Katie Couric's diary. Maybe he's just republishing her MySpace posts. Also, will I one day win some sort of journalistic prize for my coverage of Tom Junod's coverage of the Katie Couric story? If there is justice in the world...

Anyway, rather than rant further, I'll just leave you with a few choice quotations from the story, and my sarcastic comments:

• "My humanity is authentic." This is comforting; I always assumed that Katie Couric was invented by those people who make the Roomba. On a side note, my humanity is not authentic. This blog is the result of a complex text-generation algorithm. It's in beta testing right now, but with luck, by this time next year you'll be able to download similar tools from Google.
• "What is love? That is risky business." Baby, don't hurt me. Baby, don't hurt me no more.
• "I hate the word panties. It's a cheesy word for underpants." More at eleven. Blake Thunder reports from the scene.
• "Oh, my God, I'm so boring." Well, then it's a good thing you anchor one of the most-watched newscasts in the world.

OK, that's about all the patience I have for that. You can read the rest of the article here.