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And so it begins. The countdown. In a 6,000 word article in the NEW YORK magazine Katie signals to the world that her days at the anchor desk are numbered.Have you started your office pool yet?
The headlines from this ode are numerous: there's the slapping incident(could any male anchor get away with that kind of behavior? A mention of a luffah can cost millions, imagine what a wrist slap would cost.)
During the tuberculosis story in June, Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested—“sputumâ€â€”and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him “over and over and over again†on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene. It had seemed like a joke at first, but it quickly became clear that she wasn’t kidding.
“I sort of slapped him around,†Couric admits. “I got mad at him and said, ‘You can’t do this to me. You have to tell me when you’re going to use a word like that.’ I was aggravated, there’s no question about that.†But she says she has a good relationship with Cipriano. “We did ban the word sputum from all future broadcasts. It became kind of a joke.â€
There's more: there's backstabbing, the request to Leslie Stahl to reduce her salary by $500,000 to accommodate Katie's salary,and of course the plagiarism.As Jane Genova at Jane Genova:Speechwriter-Ghostwriter says Katie is jinxed.
You can't help but shake your head as you read it and exclaim: That lady is, yeah, under a dark spell.
For example, throughout the piece, Hagen captures Katie as vacillating from denial to subterfuge about everything from how she got into this situation to how it's going to why it's going that way to how she really does feel about it.
Case in point: From the article, it seems that Katie perceives the backstage backbiting and leaking as something the old guard at CBS shouldn't be doing and should be above even considering. On this Katie sounds downright shoolgirlish. She's been in the work world for years. Moreover, she's been in the ultra cut-throat world of TV. In addition, that world has become a dying medium and in such environments, expect people to be on their very worst behavior. Katie would have come across as more credible and less stupid if she said, "Of course in TV you expect undercutting, blaming, even sabotage. But this turned out, at least as I saw it, as over-the-top."
But maybe that's it: Maybe Katie is stupid.
Not so stupid, says Jim Cairns. In a piece called Katie is so dead, Cairnes writes the article could be a plant to announce Ms. Couric's exit.
You think maybe Katie is greasing the skids for her departure from the show by saying she'd rather do something else?! Like do a morning show, or 60 Minutes?! I wouldn't be surprised.
While the headlines make great soundbites,this is a must read article for anyone who is considers themselves a change agent. This is a story about powerful people who forgot that leadership is about motivating the team. It's about building trust and respect.
Couric and CBS's problems are very similar to the situation at Northwest Airlines-- don't expect the troops to rally around you when they are taking pay cuts and you are getting at fabulous salary.As Joe Hagan writes in his NEW YORK Magazine blockbuster.
Most critical to Couric’s clash with her new colleagues was the nearly insurmountable issue of money. The news division at CBS had been whittled down financially over the years, something Rather often complained about when he was the Evening News anchor. In 1991, the budget for the CBS Evening News was about $65 million a year; by 2000, it was closer to $35 million. Producers and correspondents had learned to cut corners and live on the cheap, scrambling for such simple amenities as food at news events like Columbine or Katrina while NBC showed up with its own catering truck. Now Couric’s widely reported $15 million salary (some in the TV industry say it could be closer to $22 million, though Couric and CBS refute that) was taking up a sizable chunk of the total news budget—plus her segments were expensive to shoot. A regular news segment using a single camera and a correspondent might cost about $3,000 to shoot and cut, but sending Couric to anchor from a remote location—requiring hair, makeup, lighting,
