Katie's Moment

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006 10:27 AM

I've been deep inside Katie World for the last few days, so I'm not sure about anything else going on in the world.

Some Texas congressman quit, I heard? I'll have to look into that.

No, between tracking the exploits of Katie and Matt and Meredith and writing about it for the paper and this Web site and talking about it on this newfangled Washington Post Radio, I haven't had much time to breathe. So I'm going to lead this morning with a painstakingly assembled dispatch from Katie World, and then we'll catch up on these other matters which obviously pale by comparison.

After confirming for "Today" show viewers yesterday what she called "the worst-kept secret in America," Katie Couric will join the "CBS Evening News" in September with plans to make significant changes, and do some experimenting, in her new role as anchor and managing editor.

Couric, who was torn about leaving NBC, was convinced by conversations with top CBS executives that she could do more than merely tinker with the evening news format, which has remained fairly stable for half a century, said sources at both networks and people familiar with her thinking.

The conversations began in January, and by the time serious contract negotiations got underway two weeks ago, it did not take long to hammer out a five-year, $75 million deal that roughly matches her current salary.

She ultimately realized that she would regret passing up the opportunity to become the first solo female anchor of a network evening newscast, the sources said, and some NBC executives concluded as early as last fall that she would find the temptation irresistible.

Couric rejects the notion that her primary role is as a news reader, said these sources, who declined to be quoted by name about private negotiations and strategy sessions, and she has explored the idea of doing more live interviews, traveling to hot spots and running more stories that are twice as long as the usual two-minute pieces.

CBS News President Sean McManus told his staff that Couric would be doing a hard-news broadcast and that it would not turn into "Entertainment Tonight." He also addressed the skeptics on the staff, saying they should not prejudge Couric until she succeeds Bob Schieffer in September. And McManus said he would evaluate Couric's newscast by its journalism, not by checking the ratings -- the program has long languished in third place -- after a few months.

Couric told NBC viewers that "it was a really difficult decision for a lot of reasons," in part because of "the connection I feel with you. . . . It may sound kind of corny," she said, but "we've become friends through the years. . . .

"Sometimes I think change is a good thing. Although it may be terrifying to get out of your comfort zone, it's also exciting to start a new chapter in your life." She said she had listened "to my heart and my gut."

Jeff Zucker, NBC's chief executive and a longtime Couric friend who was her original producer at "Today," said an evening news anchor job "was clearly something we couldn't offer her here, and both sides understood that. It was really a decision about her life. It had nothing to do with NBC or 'Today.' I didn't have the position she wanted." Brian Williams took over the top-rated "NBC Nightly News" 16 months ago.

"Honestly, it's a very bittersweet day for me, both personally and professionally," Zucker said. "The fact is, I'm very happy for Katie. Great people get great jobs. At the same time, I feel incredibly confident about 'Today' going forward, and that means no disrespect to Katie." Zucker noted that the top-rated "Today" show has weathered transitions from the likes of Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel.

Couric called Schieffer at home Tuesday night and thanked him for his graciousness.

Schieffer, who succeeded Dan Rather as CBS anchor 13 months ago but did not want the job permanently, was traveling yesterday but made a videotape that was played for the staff. He praised Couric and used a sports analogy, saying that when one team goes after another's big-salary player, it is serious about becoming No. 1.

He said yesterday he will still play a role after September as chief Washington correspondent and is discussing the possibility of doing commentaries for the newscast. He has boosted the program's ratings by adopting a more conversational style that features more chats with the show's correspondents.

"It's already heading in the direction that Katie is comfortable with," said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes" and a former producer of the CBS newscast.

He said Couric will do a half-dozen pieces a year for "60 Minutes," which was key to the deal because she had always dreamed of being on the program. CBS chief executive Les Moonves and longtime producer Don Hewitt had tried in the past to lure her to the newsmagazine. "What makes her perfect for us is that she does such good interviews," Fager said.

Moonves, in a statement, said he is "personally so excited" about the move, which he called a "giant leap forward" for the news division.

Couric, who had met occasionally with Moonves over the past year before the anchor job was discussed, sought and received assurances that CBS would devote ample resources to the newscast. CBS executives became convinced that Couric could have gotten more money by re-signing with NBC but that her primary motivation was finding a new challenge, several of the sources said.

Not everyone at CBS is celebrating Couric's pending arrival. Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly "60 Minutes" commentator, said on the Don Imus radio show: "I'm not enthusiastic about it. I think everybody likes Katie Couric. I mean, how could you not like Katie Couric? But I don't know anybody at CBS News who is pleased that she's coming here."

Others at CBS News are more welcoming -- Walter Cronkite praised Couric's "great talents" in a CNN interview last night -- but there is a significant faction that prizes the recent changes and ratings growth under Schieffer and wishes he could have continued. He brought the newscast within 150,000 viewers of ABC one week last month, while still trailing "NBC Nightly News" by more than 1 million.

Couric, for her part, didn't feel she had anything to prove, but wanted to leave "Today" after 15 years while she still loved doing it, said those familiar with her thinking. She has bristled at media criticism that focused on her lighter "Today" exploits, from cooking to dancing, feeling that detractors minimize all the hard-news interviews she has done over the years, particularly during the show's newsier first half-hour.

"The show will reflect her taste, talent, skills and personality," Rome Hartman, executive producer of the "CBS Evening News," told the network's Web site. One idea under consideration is for Couric to interview not just newsmakers near the top of the show but experts or ordinary people for feature stories later in the program.

Network news audiences have been declining and growing older for two decades -- the average age is about 59 -- and the format has evolved only at the margins. The anchors travel more in this era of satellite technology, as Williams demonstrated with repeated visits to New Orleans, where he first covered Hurricane Katrina last fall. Elizabeth Vargas, co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight," who has been on her own since Bob Woodruff was injured in Iraq, does an afternoon webcast. All the newscasts run more health and medical pieces and longer stories under the rubric of "A Closer Look," CBS's "Eye on America" and "NBC News in Depth."

Tom Bettag, a former executive producer of the "CBS Evening News" and "Nightline," said it is "very hard" to change the nightly news because "there is a mandate to do the day's news. . . . Right now, the formula is to get through the news as quickly as you can and get to the in-depth segments that may or may not play off the day's news." Still, said Bettag, who now works for Discovery Networks, Couric is "a real pro" who could do a program "that is substantially different."

Lawrence Grossman, a former president of NBC News and PBS, praised Couric but agreed that it is "very hard" to break the evening news mold. "It's a 20-minute program and a lot of news has to be shoehorned in," he said. "Essentially, she's got to deliver the headlines, which is what it's been for the history of television and for radio before that. I hate to sound like an old fart, but that's the way it will remain."

Numerous women -- Campbell Brown, Diane Sawyer, Carole Simpson, Paula Zahn, Lesley Stahl and others -- have either anchored network newscasts on the weekend or substituted during the week. Three women -- Walters at ABC, Connie Chung at CBS and Vargas at ABC -- have been co-anchors. But no woman has flown solo on a permanent basis, and industry executives blame a lack of boldness in a male-dominated industry, along with concerns about whether women would be seen as authority figures in time of crisis.

Now, however, the club is getting larger. "It's great to welcome another woman to the evening news," Vargas said. "Katie is a first-rate journalist. The competition will make all of us even better."

Says Philly Inquirer columnist Gail Shister : "Some question whether Couric has the chops to make the transition from morning TV - where one can fry an omelette and interview the secretary of state in consecutive segments - to the rarified atmosphere of Big Three anchordom."

And get this: There's even a Katie poll, as if she were a presidential candidate or something:

"Asked if they would rather see Couric in her longtime role as "Today" host or as the first woman to anchor a network weekday evening newscast on her own, 49 percent favored the morning and 29 percent said evening, according to a poll conducted this week by The Associated Press and TV Guide."

Um, does this sentence strike you as a tad loaded?

"The woman who dressed in Marilyn Monroe and SpongeBob SquarePants outfits on Halloween and gave viewers a tour of her colon will take the position once held by the iconic Walter Cronkite and the ousted Dan Rather."

Hey, Ted Koppel once conducted an interview with Kermit the Frog.

The NYT's Alessandra Stanley , who's not a big Couric fan, reviews yesterday's show:

"It was impossible not to choke up and grow anxious as Katie Couric announced she is leaving the "Today" show after 15 years -- please, Lord, let the next co-host not be Ann Curry.

"Ms. Couric and Matt Lauer managed the long-anticipated statement with aplomb, diluting sentimentality with touches of humor. Ms. Curry chimed in with her customary cloying intensity, saying she felt as if her sister were moving out to go to college (she was at least smart enough to not say "older sister"). As "Today" begins a momentous transition, Ms. Curry was a useful reminder of why NBC wants ABC's Meredith Vieira for the job.

Ms. Couric's on-air persona has inevitably changed, sometimes gratingly, since her saucy debut in 1991, but no other network morning personality is as vibrant. Outside her isolation booth at the news desk, Ms. Curry is downright unwatchable, and none of the network's other aspirants seem personable and down-to-earth enough to win over the show's mostly female, middle-aged audience. Ms. Vieira, 52, is an engaging, good-humored and experienced newscaster who may not always enthrall viewers, but is unlikely to bore or repel them."

Boy, when a critic doesn't like you. . . .

Arianna rips the press, recounting an award dinner by the magazine The Week at which she chatted with journalist Michael Massing, among others:

"Massing pinned the blame for the Washington press corps' spinelessness on a fear of being taken to task by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. I, on the other hand, argued that Washington reporters don't give a whit about Limbaugh and Coulter. What they care about -- deeply and passionately -- is what the people they might be sitting next to at dinner that night will think of them. Indeed, Beltway reporters are more affected by peer pressure than a junior high transfer student being offered a cigarette by the coolest girl in school. That's why they never want to stray too far from the Conventional Wisdom. Perish the thought.

"Of course, the other reason for the press's timidity is that over the last decade reporters have lost sight of the fact that their mission is to uncover the truth -- not slip between the covers with the powers-that-be."

Slip between the covers? Puh-lease. It was Arianna who got under the sheets with Al Franken at one of the conventions:

"Far too many on the Washington beat have traded their press pass for an all-access White House pass -- and, in doing so, have sacrificed their duty to the public for entry to the halls of power. The dishonor roll is long and star-studded, with Bob Woodward at the top."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff , who was there, saw it as "a panel discussion in which media types beat up the White House press corps for being too soft on President Bush. Arianna Huffington led the charge. She thinks that the White House press corps let the country down by not disputing the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Never mind that this claim was not disputed by foreign intelligence services or by our own. To the extent that there were a few dissenters within the intelligence community, no one tonight explained why reporters whose beat was the White House should have found them, or why anyone should have credited them in the face of the overwhelming intelligence consensus to the contrary.

"Nonetheless, the only real debate was over why coverage of Bush is so uncritical. One panelist argued that the cause is fear by reporters of Russ Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The discussion got me wondering why those not on the front lines of the MSM's struggle with the Bush administration are so contemptuous of those who are. The answer, I think, is that many of these folks hate Bush so much that no level of bashing short of their own pet irrational attacks can satisfy them."

A headline like this always grabs me: The case for buying off politicians :

"The main argument against public financing [of campaigns] is the cost," says the New Republic. "But the cost of public funding must be weighed against the fiscal benefits. According to Nancy Watzman of Public Campaign, public financing of congressional elections would cost about $1.5 billion every two years. By contrast, the current system encourages billions each year in business subsidies and tax breaks that lack any market rationale. And it results in legislation like the bankruptcy, energy, and prescription-drug bills that amount to a transfer of billions from the working and middle classes to businesses and their stockholders. By a modest estimate, an investment of less than $1 billion per year for public financing would free more than $50 billion each year that could be allocated or saved, depending on what Congress, free of the pressures of the system's subtle kinds of bribery, decided."

Glenn Reynolds says he has, too, blogged about DeLay--but just isn't all that excited:

"To the extent that DeLay stood for anything, though, it was the win-at-any-cost, outdo-the-Democrats-in-pork mentality that I think is bad for the country and, for that matter, the Republicans. I can see how people stories like this are a bigger deal to inside-the-beltway types who actually knew DeLay and who followed his activities more closely than I do, but just as I never felt any particular urge to defend DeLay, I don't think his departure matters all that much either."

Chris Matthews is getting mocked by Harry Shearer and other online pundits for some "Hardball" outtakes from a DeLay interview after the Hammer had given him the scoop about his resignation:

MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new focus group stuff on the candidates?

DELAY: No I haven't

MATTHEWS: It's great stuff. I'll send it to you -- it's great -- yeah it's great stuff. Hillary, John Kerry. All these guys, all these Democrats, and how they do. And, uh, Frank Luntz did it . . .

DELAY: who I like

MATTHEWS: . . . and Hillary did not do well. Kerry did well.

DELAY: You're kidding.

MATTHEWS: I am NOT kidding. They didn't like Edwards -- they thought he was a rich lawyer, pretending to care about poor people. . . .

DELAY: Too slick. Too slick.

MATTHEWS: . . . and Hillary was a know-it-all.

DELAY: Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all

[ . . . ]

MATTHEWS: Thanks. I owe you one. I owe you two -- today and last night.

DELAY: No you don't.

MATTHEWS: No, I do.

DELAY: I appreciate it.

I'm sure he does.

Ed Morrissey x"Russ Feingold has decided to embrace the far-left fever swamp in hopes of building momentum for his run at the Presidency in 2008, and yesterday announced his support for gay marriage as another step in that strategy. The Washington Post reports that Feingold blames Republicans for using the controversy as a wedge issue, but also notes that his fellow Democrats have not lined up in support of gender-neutral marriage either:

"Apparently Feingold intends on positioning himself thusly, which is why he went further than the question required. He wants to signal that the far left can absolutely count on him to carry their platform into the 2008 convention. It's not a bad idea in the primaries, and he will be able to harness the money-raising power of the MoveOn and I-ANSWER crowd early enough to be able to keep them from financing any of his more moderate rivals.

"In terms of actually winning primaries, let alone a general election, Feingold has made a mistake, however. Bans on gender-neutral marriage garner large majorities wherever contested, up to 70% of the vote in some places. Feingold can blame Republicans all he wants, but those numbers show a significant number in his own party support the traditional notions of marriage as well."

Finally, blogging can be profitable, at least if you're Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos:

"In a little less than three years," says the San Francisco Chronicle , "he has become one of few full-time political bloggers to earn enough (about $80,000 last year, plus a book advance and cash from pre-sales) to be able to buy a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom Berkeley house."