Tweaking the News

"We want to make it a little catchier," she told her staff. " Are you feeling as stuffed as your turkey?" She pondered for a moment. " ' Tis the season to be indulging?" Couric conjured up the series and reported the opening segment, on the genetic causes of being fat.

"The news of the day is still our staple, but that doesn't mean we can't do a really smart series on obesity," says Couric, who is perpetually on a diet herself. "Or a piece on foster kids being given addictive drugs . . . 'Hard' and 'soft' are completely antiquated terms. Some of the stories on the front page of The Washington Post and New York Times aren't traditional hard-news stories, and I've never heard anyone ask them to justify that."

In Couric's early weeks as anchor, her team loaded the broadcast with new segments -- from a nightly "Free Speech" forum for outside commentators to the highlighting of interesting photos and Web items -- while bypassing or truncating a handful of important stories. In recent weeks, though, "Free Speech" has been cut to barely once a week and other small features deep-sixed.

CBS's White House correspondent Jim Axelrod says Couric and the staff are still "tinkering with the right flow of hard news and soft news and commentary. I don't think it's any surprise that at the outset, people said, 'Wait a minute, I want more news here.' "

"I think 'Free Speech' was a great idea and well worth trying, but in the end it just took too much time away from news," Schieffer says. "All news programs are a work in progress. We're still in something of a shakedown cruise, but I think we're moving in the right direction."

National correspondent Byron Pitts says that "people are angry, in a good way, to make this the best show it can be . . . A tremendous amount of work went into the planning for Katie's arrival, and once she got here we realized we still had work to do. The problems aren't going to be fixed overnight."

CBS executives said all along that they planned to experiment with the format. "Maybe it takes some getting used to at 6:30 on a weeknight, but I think it's what people expect of her," Hartman says.

The experimentation generally comes after the first commercial break. Couric has led her broadcast with Iraq 18 times, terror-related subjects a dozen times, American politics a dozen times and other foreign-policy issues five times. But there are still differences among the newscasts. On Nov. 20, when her rivals were leading with developments in Iraq, CBS's first two stories dealt with an Alabama school bus accident that killed three teenagers and broader questions of student safety -- a local tragedy that warranted a few sentences on NBC and ABC.

"I think sometimes people have Iraq fatigue," Couric says. "If there's not something really significant going on, it starts to feel like 'Groundhog Day.' We felt millions of kids get on a school bus every day and this would just be interesting. It made us wonder why seat belts weren't required by buses."

Couric, who interviewed O.J. Simpson in 2000 and 2004, also broke with the pack in declining to cover Simpson's book deal and Fox television special for a hypothetical discussion about the two murders he maintains he did not commit.

"I felt it was so sleazy," says Couric, who aired a "Free Speech" commentary on domestic violence instead. "We felt it would turn into more of an infomercial for Fox and Judith Regan," the book's publisher. "It seemed so distasteful." Couric covered the story days later when Regan's boss, Rupert Murdoch, bowed to public outrage and killed the deal.

That stance -- Couric introduced the commentary by telling viewers the Simpson saga wasn't worth their time -- was reminiscent of CBS's Dan Rather refusing, in the summer of 2001, to join the media frenzy over missing congressional intern Chandra Levy.