The New Yorker has a piece on Katie Couric’s ill-fated voyage with CBS:

I don’t think that people want less news; they want, I believe, the same kind of informed passion and doggedness that TV-news people displayed while covering Hurricane Katrina, and they want anchors to go deep into issues. I would more than happily watch Brian Williams do an hour of news every night (and that’s not, I should say, because a member of my family works for NBC News). Who knows, young people might turn on their TVs in droves if news organizations had a few choice strands of Michael Moore’s DNA in them, and pointed out when, say, a public official wasn’t telling the truth. Jon Stewart is a lightning rod both for people who decry the notion that young people get their news from watching “The Daily Show,” and for people who think that his (and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”) is the only current-events show worth watching. I’m not a Stewartite, but when Dick Cheney denies making certain statements about the war in Iraq and Stewart shows three video clips that prove he’s lying, I think he’s providing a real service to the country, and I’d like to think that that’s what his fans are responding to.

I absolutely do think that’s what his fans are responding to. And those who read blogs are responding to it too. The story tells us that “the viewership of nightly national news began to decline more than two decades ago, before the Internet and before cable news became a big deal.” The decline will continue. The format is dead.

But the story suggests the real reason for Couric’s problem:

CBS doesn’t appear to be all that interested in maintaining its news division; earlier this year, it was reported that the network was looking into using CNN feeds in order to reduce its news-gathering expenses. It costs CBS seven million dollars a year to run its Baghdad bureau, which does sound like a lot of money—until you realize that Couric makes about fifteen million dollars a year and, last year, Moonves made close to forty million. Couric is far from being the most important part of the story; her time at CBS will be, luckily for her, just a footnote to history, a very expensive Band-Aid that failed to stop the bleeding.

I continue to believe Couric could have done something good with the show.

While on the topic, On The Media had an interesting piece last week noting that in LA the Spanish language local news broadcasts lead in the ratings not because of sensationalist ratings grabber stories but, rather, because they do a better job.

This is Former L.A. Times reporter Joe Matthews:

[O]n many of these nights of the six weeks I looked at, there was a very big crime story. You would see it on both English and Spanish. But the difference in how the stories were covered sort of shows the philosophy.

In the Spanish-language broadcasts you’d see many more people interviewed, and not just crime victims but folks affected, a lot of questions asked about police conduct and police response that you never see addressed.

He says there’s really passionate advocacy in the journalism they practice that drives the stations to look at more serious social issues the other stations don’t cover.

You Tube has the gem below of CBS anchor Katie Couric making fun of a video on You Tube that showed Dan Rather fussing with his overcoat. Couric & Co seem to be having fun and in great spirits (and she’s as likeable on the video as on camera):

And here’s the (in)famous Rather video:

When you watch this, you now realize what it meant that Rather was the (micro) Managing Editor of his newscast…

See our related post on Bob Schieffer HERE.

UPDATE: In the interest of total accuracy, the Dan Rather video above that is offered on You Tube was not created by You Tube but by comedian Harry Shearer for My Damn Channel.

Dan Rather is now a senior, retired network anchor.

Otherwise, you’d have to say “Not a good career move!” when you read this:

Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather escalated a feud with his former employer Tuesday, saying CBS Corp. (CBS) (CBS) Chief Executive Leslie Moonves “doesn’t know about news.”

Moonves had said earlier Rather’s remarks that the network was “tarting” up its newscast with Katie Couric, Rather’s successor, were “sexist.”

The spat started Monday when Rather, speaking by phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program with Joe Scarborough, said CBS had made the mistake of taking the evening news broadcast and “dumbing it down, tarting it up,” and playing up topics such as celebrities over war coverage.

While referring to Couric as a “nice person,” Rather said “the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ show ethos to the ‘Evening News,’ and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience.”

Rather’s big problem: those who remember the Dan Rather takeover of the CBS Evening News and the many stories about how Walter Cronkite was basically rushed to the door and into retirement to accommodate Rather (he was barely-used by CBS during the Dan Rather era) know that Rather himself took CBS newscasts down a few notches by the way he reported some news stories.

He’d use colorful, folksy phrases that suggested he perhaps felt his audience had an IQ a bit lower than the audience to which Cronkite was broadcasting. It also felt as if he was straining to be quotable.

Cronkite was avuncular and enjoyed widespread popularity and credibility. Rather was more of a flashy globe-trotting CBS correspondent. Once Rather inherited the anchor chair from the hastily retired Cronkite, no one could ever confuse him with carrying on Uncle Walter’s style, which was heavily influenced by Cronkite’s years as a wire reporter and working for Edward R. Murrow. Cronkite was a tireless worker who by one account had the nickname “Old Ironpants.”

It was less about Cronkite as anchor than Cronkite presenting the news; with Rather, it seemed more about Rather reporting the news and, perhaps, reacting to it.

Ironically, the man who most carried on the more pristine Cronkite style was Bob Schieffer, who replaced Rather. The grey-haired Schieffer, the quintessential, loyal and underused CBS company man, surprised many by helping boost the ratings. When he took over for Rather some critics predicted that an old fogey like him could never build viewership. But he did. MORE:

Moonves, speaking at an event in New York Tuesday morning sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, called the remarks “sexist” and said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving.

“She’s been on the air for nine months,” Moonves said. “Let’s give her a break.”

Moonves is somewhat off base as well.

Nine months is not the equivalent of one second in broadcasting.

TV sitcoms have been yanked off the air in less time for failing to attract an audience. The bottom line is that Couric’s talents have been poorly-used and packaged by CBS. She has, in fact, conducted excellent hard news interviews during her career and that includes on “Today.” Instead, there was endless hype about the beginning of a new generational era, with a woman heading a newcast, bringing in new viewers etc, etc.

Which read really nice.

Except that the river of viewers flowing to the show didn’t happen.

Couric started strong but has settled into a distant third in the evening news ratings race. Last month her “CBS Evening News” set a record for its least-watched broadcast for at least two decades, then broke it the very next week.

Later Tuesday, Rather said during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” program that he didn’t regret making his earlier remarks, but insisted he was referring to CBS’s management of the newscast, not to Couric personally.

“It doesn’t have to do with Katie, it doesn’t have to do with gender,” Rather said. “It has to do with the corporate leadership. … Les Moonves knows about entertainment, but he doesn’t know about news.”

So here you have it, two media bigwigs doing damage control. Rather did not leave CBS as a journalistic role model that young journalism school students wish to emulate. He didn’t end his career as a negative role model, but he was not a smash success in the ratings or among critics (and certainly not among conservatives and conservative bloggers who made him a “high concept” symbol of all they claimed was wrong with a media that apparently is righted in their eyes by those fair-and-balanced folks at Fox News who never show THEIR biases..).

And Moonves miscalculated, too — taking a proven ratings winner with high likeability and hard-news interviewing talent and misusing her.

Actually, Couric’s stint at CBS News so far is reminiscent of the great David Letterman’s ill-fated stint as Oscar host.

The lesson in both: you need to work within THE FORM that has worked and THEN, if you’re successful, change the form.

You don’t just come in and do your thing and forget the form that has been successful and accepted by viewers.

PS: The Oscars should give Letterman another chance. And viewers should give Couric another sampling now that CBS is tinkering with the newscast.

And Rather? He needs to be more realistic about his role in lowering the seriousness of news reporting in some of the phrases he used on Election Night. “Courage” was only the high-profile, cringe-generating phrase. Rather didn’t deserve a lot of the ridicule and rage heaped on him. But he also contributed to the demise of the Cronkite tone of news-anchoring.

And that’s the way it is.

It seems that Dan Rather attacked Katie Couric / the “Evening News.” After saying that he ‘likes’ Couric, Rather went on to say:

You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They’ve done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years. They make all those kind of the superficial changes. I do want to say that, I think, under Rick Kaplan, that they have tried to harden up the broadcast in recent days, but that is a relative phrase, harden it up. That , you know, the trend line continues, as I say, dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage.

You can watch the video here.

As far as I can tell, Rather is completely right. America’s news has become entertainment. I mean - they even interrupted the news that Pace would be replaced because Paris Hilton had to go to jail.

I really need to get myself Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason. As someone who does not live in America, I cannot truly see what’s going on. I get an overall impression, but I do not see what you see (except for some videoclips on the Internet). Therefore, it is important for me to read up on it (also so I can recognize the dumbing down of the news here in the Netherlands and perhaps do something about it).

Two posts I published at my own blog:
Kill… With Manners: The New York Times published a fascinating article about informal Jihadi rules of conduct, also known as “Jihad etiquette.” There are six basic rules. Two of them:
- You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt: This is the “let-God-sort-them-out”-line of thinking: in essence it means that God knows who of the bystanders deserved to die and who did not. Those who did not deserve to die will go to heaven (as martyrs), those who did deserve to die will go to hell.
- You may need to ask your parents for their consent.

To find out what the other four rules are, please read my post.

Failing Your Own Test: Katie Couric delivered a great commencement address at Williams College. She said (among other things): “The proliferation of celebrity magazines makes Lindsey Lohan’s latest stint in rehab seem more important than what’s happening in Darfur.”

The question is, does Couric live up to her own standards?

CBS bet its future — and a ton of money — on Katie Couric, who became NBC Today Show’s mega star due to her TV presence, excellent features and (yes) tough interviews. But mostly because Couric was young, a break from the stodgy old TV newscast mold — and was highly popular.

Now it’s clear Couric has tanked in the network newscast ratings, CBS is in third place and unless there is some dramatic resampling by the audience, she hasn’t caught and — is unlikely to catch — on. Instead, longtime ABC News veteran Charles Gibson is Number One?

Why? Mark Daniels has a theory HERE.