The Katie Chronicles
Sometimes, thankfully, Couric-centric conversations get beyond that. One topic that got bandied around this weekend: Why, exactly, Couric has come under such intense scrutiny from the press corps.
Sure, the "Evening News'" ratings struggle and personnel changes are a legitimate story for media watchers. But as I pointed out last April, Couric was already the focus of a staggering number of stories before her first day. You just get the feeling that there is something about the "Evening News" anchor that has struck a nerve with media types. They seem to relish examining her struggles, a tendency perhaps best exemplified by this Philadelphia Inquirer hit job from April.
The reason for the antagonism, in my opinion, has something to do Couric's reputation as "perky," an adjective that one would have a hard time applying to Edward R. Murrow. You see, media types don't like "perky." They see themselves as Defenders Of Serious Journalism, and for the most part, that's a good thing: We need somebody trying to maintain a standard of quality journalism in an environment in which ratings pressures can sometimes push news programming towards lowest common denominator content.
But the downside is that media critics, in their zeal to dismiss anyone who doesn't fit their tried-and-true standards of journalistic legitimacy, tend to be unwilling to give folks like Couric a fair shake. Once you've been defined as "perky," it seems, there's no going back. CBS didn't help matters by initially crafting a softer broadcast for its new host, a course they've reversed under new Executive Producer Rick Kaplan. It will be interesting to see whether media writers start to treat Couric more sympathetically now that her broadcast has gone back to a more traditional, harder format. As Mark Jurkowitz noted on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," "[i]n terms of actual subject matter, there is very little difference between the three major network newscasts each night."
There's a bigger question beneath the Couric fixation: Why spend so much time worrying about the "Evening News" in the first place? In today's media world, where cable television, radio, and the Internet provide numerous alternatives to the broadcast networks, a nightly news anchor is not the central figure in American life that he or she once was. Instead of examining the wilderness of news options available to consumers, many media critics continue to focus on the nightly news anchors, and specifically Couric, who offers an easy storyline and an easy target. If nightly newscasts are as irrelevant to the public conversation as you keep telling us they are, TV writers, than why do you keep writing about them?