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Katie Couric’s Gig At Yahoo Breaks All The Rules

How the world gets its news is changing every day. Remember having to wait to hear about details of a story until the morning paper? For better or worse, now the latest scoop is up on the web in secon...
Katie Couric’s Gig At Yahoo Breaks All The Rules
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  • How the world gets its news is changing every day. Remember having to wait to hear about details of a story until the morning paper? For better or worse, now the latest scoop is up on the web in seconds.

    Longtime and respected news anchor Katie Couric recently did an interview with Secretary of State John Kerry. She acknowledged that if she was still at her gig at the Today show, the interview would have probably lasted five minutes. If she had been at her other former job at CBS, the interview would have been about 3-1/2 minutes.

    But things are different now. The internet doesn’t have to deal with structured one-hour telecasts that cater to network advertisers and rigid schedules. Katie Couric works at Yahoo News, where she holds the title of chief global anchor. She doesn’t do “a show” per se.

    Her recent interview with Kerry covered a lot more ground, because she had a lot more time. “To be able to sit down and talk to him for 30 minutes about a very complicated topic that people needed a refresher course on, I can’t tell you how liberating and exciting it was,” said Couric. “It’s such a multi-faceted story. I could have talked to him for another half hour, but I didn’t want to press my luck.”

    Kerry also acknowledged the medium shift during the interview, “I am sitting here with you doing it on Yahoo—the landscape has shifted dramatically.”

    Howard Kurtz, who is a Fox News analyst, noted how different Couric conducted the interview with not having to fluff it up for television, “To my eye, Couric conducted the interview very differently than she would have on TV. She was all business, wearing her glasses, asking policy questions and feeling no need to inject a lighter moment or two.”

    You can find complete analysis of the Kerry interview and see it in its entirety by clicking here.

    We can expect Couric to conduct interviews with specialists in everything from science innovators to celebrities. She has already done interviews with several prominent figures including former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer described Couric’s role at Yahoo, “Katie will lead a growing team of correspondents at Yahoo News who will cover the world’s most interesting stories and newsmakers.”

    It was a big weekend for Couric personally as well. She wed financier John Molner on Saturday in a small intimate ceremony in the backyard of her house in the Hamptons.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

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