Katiemania!

Finally, my friends, Katie Couric is coming to CBS. Rejoice! Now, I'm not expressing that sentiment because I'm excited about Couric's imminent arrival, though I am looking forward to watching the way her arrival reshapes CBS News. No, my reason for rejoicing is something else: I'm just thrilled that the world no longer has to endure the avalanche of will-she-or-won't-she stories that the press has thrown at us for the past few months.

Sure, we're now dealing with a fair share of post-announcement Couric stories, but they can't last all that long (can they?). And most of them are at least about something, issues like what the move means for CBS News and how it will affect the bottom line. Before the announcement, by contrast, we had to endure day after day of speculative pieces that didn't really move the story in a significant way. Katie wants to go! Katie wants to stay! CBS isn't offering enough money! The deal is done! The deal is stalled! Wait – it's back on again!

The whole thing had more than a faint whiff of high school, with the nerds – that would be the media critics – obsessing over the lives of the popular kids, chief among them Katie, the queen bee around whom the Matts and Dianes and Soledads revolve. I'm not trying to be too hard on the nerds here – they're my people, after all – but it seemed like they got so blinded by the Couric story, with its celebrity protagonist, that they forgot one of the primary rules of journalism: If a particular topic offers you nothing to write about, well then don't write about it.

I'm not suggesting that Couric's possible jump to CBS News wasn't a story, by any means. But the breathless coverage that greeted every rumor and offhand comment was disproportionate to what the story was offering. As my friend and colleague Paul McLeary wrote on Tuesday, the day before the announcement, "the constant drumbeat of Couric non-news, rumor and speculation has officially entered the realm of the absurd. The story hasn't moved forward much in weeks, yet critics and media writers continue to fill airtime and column inches war-gaming the possible scenarios."

We had a number of discussions about how to cover the Couric speculation here at Public Eye. The story, as it were, was in our backyard, after all. But we didn't see any real value in speculating on whether or not she would jump ship, especially when the speculation was based on anonymous sources and conjecture. Now that Couric is coming to CBS News, we've got a lot more to hang our hats on, and we'll be covering the story of Couric's arrival and the evolution of CBS News aggressively. I hope the rest of the media universe shakes off their embarrassing pre-announcement Couric coverage and joins us. High school's over, guys.