Katie's the One

Published Apr 05 2006, 02:29 PM by webteam

Sorry about the blogging hiatus. I've been crunching on deadline for two days working on a story about sports journalism in the wake of the steroids scandal for this week's paper. There's a ton of business to get to, but let's take first things first.

The worst kept secret in broadcast television is out and Katie Couric is the new Walter Cronkite. I flipped over to the "Today" show this morning and found it interesting that Tom Brokaw (who had interviewed Art Buchwald) was on the set chatting with Katie, as if the old NBC anchor was lending his symbolic approval to Katie's elevation to network anchor status. (By the way, Brokaw is aging dramatically.)

Here, embedded in the CBS press release are several key paragraphs attempting to buttress Katie's reportorial credentials.

She has interviewed an extraordinarily diverse collection of newsmakers, from presidents and prime ministers to captains of industry and cultural icons. Couric has interviewed Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush when he was a presidential candidate, along with all of the major presidential candidates over the past several elections. She has also sat down with Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Sandra Day O’Connor and First Ladies Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson. Couric has interviewed major world leaders including Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah (in his first U.S. television interview), Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres. Other Couric interviews include Bill Gates; Tricia Meili, the Central Park Jogger; the last interview with John F. Kennedy, Jr.; and a myriad of other authors, politicians and newsmakers.

Couric is the recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award for her March 2000 series on colon cancer. Those reports contributed to the 2001 RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence won by NBC News. She also has won six Emmy Awards, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award, a National Headliner Award, an Associated Press Award, a Matrix Award, two American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards, the Harvard University School of Public Health’s Julius B. Richmond Award and UNICEF’s Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award.

We'll see. Everyone knows that the gravitas question is the crucial one. This morning, while chatting about the health of President Gerald Ford with Brokaw, Couric referred to the ex-president as "the energizer bunny." That kind of happy talk won't cut the mustard on the evening newscast.

But for now, I'm going to avoid falling prey to old-fogeyism and will fight the temptation to launch into a lecture about why Couric's appointment is victory for "infotainment" over news. People do grow into the job as anchor and the trick will be for CBS to build a show around Couric's strengths rather than trying to mold her into some traditional network anchor formula.

My gut says there will be some tremendous early buzz when Couric takes the job. Whether she can hold those eyeballs in another matter entirely. And though this will all probably get lost in the hubub very soon, CBS owes a huge dept of gratitude to interim anchor Bob Schieffer. It's now easy to forget the chaos at CBS News in the wake of that ill-fated "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on George Bush's military service that prematurely ended the careers of four show staffers, Dan Rather, and CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

And I'll say it one final time. Moving from Schieffer to Couric isn't a transition. It's whiplash.