Katie Couric
 

Not to start a ton of threads or anything, but what is with the Katie Couric stuff. Cool, she got a new job. Awesome. Who really cares? Sure, she seems pleasant enough, and I'm sure she's fairly intelligent, but she's not any sort of earth shattering journalist. Also, after CBS used 20 minutes to show a story about Suri Cruise, I think they should just eliminate "evening news" from the title of the show. Watching network news is like tuning into entertainment tonight...only with a liberal slant.

You need to watch this, if you haven't.

http://media.bestprices.com/content/dvd/50/156754.jpg

I really wanted Bob Schieffer to freak out and yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!"

One of the unfortunate things about living in the Mountain Time Zone is that the national news is on at 5:30, and a lot of us aren't home in time to see it.

I caught the last ten minutes or so and thought it was OK.

Nice new set for her to walk around.

The content will work itself out -- they're in experimental mode at the moment, obviously.

I thought she looked and sounded nervous -- understandable given the huge buildup and pressure on her.

Finally, as I've said before, most of the folks on this forum only remember Couric as the host of TODAY. Before that she was a local and national (NBC) network correspondent with solid journalistic credentials covering stories all over the world.

My contention is not so much with Couric as with the concept of evening network news. Lets be honest, very few people on network(or cable) news are thought provoking and story-breaking journalists. It seems as though the requirements are to be fairly attractive and well spoken, but it isn't required to have the cognitive ability to understand the stories you're reporting. I think most people who really pay attention to current events/politics/policy would agree that that the evening news is packaged for the masses.

Ever met any of them?

You would be surprized.

I've met a couple fox news guys and Anderson Cooper, but never any network people. Me saying they're not smart enough to understand the stories they report is most likely a stretch, but I still think its style over substance.

I dare say you are right. But I think Shinerbock is on to something as well. Perhaps it's that network people rather than news people are ultimately in charge of the news show. Perhaps its that in this day of news anytime, trying to put the day's news in 20+ minutes just doesn't work as well, so while the people may be thought-provoking, the stories aren't. Perhaps it is the trend toward news as entertainment, although I think that is more prevalent in local TV news. Perhaps its just that I'm eating supper with my family and hearing about the day at school when the network news is on.

I grew up in a household that watched the local and national news religiously -- I can still see and hear the Huntley-Brinkley Report, and among my earliest memories are those of the reports from Vietnam, including the casualty count for the day.

But I truly can't remember the last time I watched network news -- it may well be 15 years. I get my news from a variety of sources, but network news is not one of them, nor is Katie Couric or any other anchor going to change that. I couldn't even tell you who the anchors at NBC or ABC are. Fairly or unfairly, my feeling is that network news is past its prime.

Please remember that even with names like "managing editor," the anchors don't really format the shows.

Frankly, I think most (not all) of the cable net anchors are lightweights -- just readers. That's not been true of any of the major network anchors I've worked with. They are remarkably bright and well informed people.

So they write the copy?

They do most of the fact checking and investigation on their own?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Which "they, and what copy?"

I think he means that the network news anchors write their own copy and do the fact-checking and investigation on their own. He's asking if that is the case (which I don't believe it is, aren't there writers and researchers who do all of that?).

My journalistic experience is in print, so I'm not much help in this thread. The only experience I have with the inner workings of news is at ESPN, where the SportsCenter anchors write most of their own copy and do a lot of their own research.

I don't know about the big guys, but locally, it really depends on the anchors. Some are reporters at heart, and act like it, and some are just good at reading a teleprompter and looking concerned.

This means you, Erica Bryant. Especially the looking concerned part.

"There are stingrays on display in a local mall in Tennessee. Are they dangerous? Could a child die? News at 11" *CONCERNED FACE*

/seriously people it was a freak accident!

ksigkid pretty much summed it up - I want to know the extent to which the network anchors do the work of a reporter.

How much journalism do they do on an average day?