All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

On August 19, 1965, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite became the first regularly-scheduled news program to broadcast in color.

Tonight, we'll reach another milestone. We're broadcasting for the first time in High Definition.

If you're not much of a techy, a trip to an electronics store can be a confusing jumble of abbreviations. HD (for high-definition), SD (for standard definition), LCD. For all that, I need a Ph.D!

About 30 percent of U.S. households now have HDTVs. If you already have one, you'll notice a difference tonight.

I'll try to make sure there's no lipstick on my teeth ... if I do, you will notice!

My Notebook today is on ushering in the new era. You've just read part of it, but you can watch the rest below.

My chat with Bob Schieffer last night got some props from the National Journal’s Hotline today – as its quote of the day.

The quote? "That phrase was invented here at CBS between 1962 and 1964."

The phrase? “Too close to call.”

At first it sounds like something out of a horse race – a literal one, not the political races in Iowa or New Hampshire. Curious if that was the case, I asked Couric & Co. to check it out. Sure enough, language guru William Safire had pondered the same thing in one of his “On Language” columns back in 1996. Safire writes:

Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio remembers the phrase from the early days of television, and directed me to Martin Plissner of CBS, a pioneer of electronic election coverage.

"That phrase was invented at CBS between 1962 and 1964," says Plissner with the confidence never shared by lexicographers. "During that period, instead of using the exit polling we have today, we used a model we had devised for predicting or calling elections based on certain reported-precinct results. That gave us a sample to which we could apply mathematical formulae to determine a call. When we had a situation in which all the votes were reported but there was no clear winner, we called that election too close to call."

A little poking around inside CBS News today revealed more: that Lou Harris, who worked for CBS News in the ‘60s, is said to have first uttered those words on air when reporting on a tight race for governor of Massachusetts in 1962.

Maybe it’ll come in handy this year.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Mitt Romney would give a much-debated "religion speech" later this week. As CBSNews.com's Vaughn Ververs noted:

Romney's Mormon faith has been an underlying theme of his presidential candidacy but, until today, it has been an area he and his campaign have shied away from addressing directly.

"This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor's own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden in a statement released this evening.

Throughout this campaign year, Romney has frequently been asked whether he would address his faith directly. Many evangelical Christians view the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, critically. And voters in general have expressed hesitance about voting for a presidential candidate who subscribes to that faith. Last June, 43 percent of registered voters in a CBS News poll said they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon.

Romney has frequently been asked whether he would consider delivering a speech about his faith along the lines of the address John F. Kennedy gave when his Catholic faith provoked a similar discussion in the 1960 presidential campaign.

When asked about the possibility of giving such a speech by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer last month, Romney replied, "I probably could never do something that would compare to what John F. Kennedy did - his was a masterpiece in American political history."

Anyone curious about that can check out the Boston Globe, which has helpfully reprinted Kennedy's historic remarks.

And this website, devoted to American rhetoric, has audio and video links to Kennedy's speech and the Q&A which followed.

Fascinating stuff. And a fascinating window into a different time and place.

Greg Kandra is the editor of "Couric & Co."

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A decade ago, I found myself working on a cable documentary about a little girl who fell down a well. In the late 1980's, it was a story that had gripped the world in the days before we were all being riveted by the likes of O.J., Paris, and Britney.

I was astonished to read this morning that the girl who fell down the well, a.k.a. "Baby Jessica," is now 21 -- and a lot has changed:

The 18-month old girl pulled from a backyard well in the U.S. two decades ago is now a young wife and mother - one waiting to collect donations given to her during her ordeal that are expected to total $1 million or more.

The anniversary of Jessica McClure's rescue passed Tuesday like almost every other day in the 21-year-old's life, with no public comment from her about the event that once captivated viewers around the world.

The young wife and mother is living quietly in this West Texas city, the same one where she fell into the backyard well.

"Jessica's just been a wonderful, wonderful mother," said her father, Chip McClure. "That's always been Jessica's dream, to be a stay-at-home mom..."

Read full post…

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started looking into the lucrative, $85 billion college loan industry shortly after his election in November. What began as a probe into possible kickbacks to school officials for steering students to preferred lenders has widened to envelop a federal education official and the chancellor of New York's state university system.

CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn has been reporting on the probe and has the latest developments here.

Read full post…

We have another hat in the ring today.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney formally announced he's running for the Republican nomination for president.

If you're wondering -- like I am -- where the "Mitt" of Mitt Romney comes from, the always-reliable Vaughn Ververs, Senior Political Editor for CBSNews.com provides this tantalizing detail, from an AP snapshot:

His first name is Willard. He was named for his father's friend J. Willard Marriott. Mitt, his middle name, comes from a relative who played football for the Chicago Bears - Milton Romney. The governor went by 'Billy' in kindergarten.

Now you know. Could the next President of the United States be named Willard Milton Romney?

I still don’t get it. Why the frenzied, breathless, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it news coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith?

Two days after I questioned the inexplicable, disproportionate magnitude of coverage of the arrested astronaut, came the overblown wall-to-wall treatment of Anna Nicole’s death.

Did she cure cancer when I wasn’t looking?

Had she negotiated peace in the Middle East?

Tell me what about her death warranted the coverage given her on the so-called all-news cable channels?

Did the death of Mother Teresa get this treatment? I don’t think so.

I say I don’t get it, but of course, I do. It’s show biz. It’s pandering for an audience.

But it has less to do with journalism than with drawing a crowd. And that’s a decision made by the executives who run those news channels. They scrubbed all other stories, cancelled commercial breaks, and ordered non-stop coverage of Anna Nicole.

I’ll stipulate that she was a celebrity – of sorts. And her life has been a soap opera on high heels. And her death is news – of sorts. And part of the news audience would be interested to learn about it. And it should be reported.

But the level of coverage accorded her death was – to say the least – over-the-top.

Of course I understand what’s going on. But I know I’m not alone in deeming it an embarassment and in stating it does not reflect the reasons many of us got into the news business.

Our friends over at Public Eye have started their own roundup of astronaut puns. We did a little Googling on our own to see what others were saying. As sad and strange as this story is, it appears America's headline writers just can't help themselves.

A sampling:

Astro-nut's Fixation Out Of This World (Edmonton Sun)
Dark Side of the Loon (New York Daily News)
Lust In Space (New York Post)
Moonstruck Astronaut's Mission Improbable (London Times)
On A Strange Mission (Newsday)
A Spacewalk On The Wild Side (Ft. Wayne News Sentinal)

And finally, for the quintessentially local angle, from the Anchorage Daily News:

Astronaut's Wild Arrest Orbits Around Alaskan

Tomorrow, President Bush kicks off his Super Bowl weekend with a visit to the Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg, Virginia.
But he’s not there for a “Seaweed Peppermint Wrap” or a “Smoothing Body Glow.” Instead, he’ll get a different kind of scrubbing—from Congressional Democrats, who have assembled at Kingsmill for their annual retreat.

Tomorrow will be the first time the president has visited the Democrats’ retreat since just after he took office in 2001. It was easier to be “bipartisan” back then: Republicans controlled the House and Senate, 9/11 (and the Iraq war) hadn’t yet happened. The president could get bills passed without a single vote from the opposition party.

How the world has changed. Speaking to the Democrats in 2001 was a courtesy. Speaking to the Democrats in 2007 is a necessity. And so is taking their questions.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek reminded us that when President Bush was Governor Bush, he was known for reaching out to the Democrats who controlled the Texas legislature. He said “that example gave many of us the idea that Bush was eager to work with the opposing party. But that wasn’t true. He HAD to work with the Democrats in Texas, and now he HAS to work with the Democrats in Washington. He’s a realist and, since last year’s election, he knows that being bipartisan is what he has to do to get anything accomplished.”

Still, I can’t help but wonder: If you’re a realist, isn’t it smarter to be bipartisan whenever you can—not just whenever you have to? Obviously there are honest differences between—and, sometimes, within—the two sides. But I disagree with the political activist Grover Norquist, who famously said that “bipartisanship is just another word for date-rape.” Working with the other party doesn’t have to mean surrendering your principles. Actually, compromise is a fundamental American principle. That’s a big reason the Constitution makes it so hard to get anything done without broad support.

Maybe next time politicians ask for our vote, our first question shouldn’t be: where do ou stand on the issues? It should be: where can you compromise on the issues—work with the other side—and deliver?