She moved to Pentagon coverage at NBC after being warned not to become one of those “cute girls who does features.” Her first job was in Miami local news, then a mecca for “if it bleeds it leads” crime stories, and then she transitioned to a reporter in the early days of CNN, where she struggled with the basics of teleprompters.
She admits that it was as much for him as for herself that she initially pursued her career, even though she eventually came to love the adrenaline of pursuing stories. It was Couric’s relationship with her father - a journalist turned frustrated public relations man - who inspired her love of journalism. But her memoir is actually an often-thoughtful look at the now-64-year-old Couric’s decadeslong career, tackling the ways she - and women of her generation - felt boxed in by gendered demands for relatability, even as she benefited from being able to meet that demand. The book has already made headlines for her candid writing about the media business some outlets highlighted her thoughts about now-disgraced coanchor Matt Lauer and former colleague Deborah Norville, deeming the memoir vendetta-driven and misogynistic. (And, later, a tabloid target.) But, in a surprising move at the time, she left morning television to slide into the CBS Evening News anchor chair in the aughts and later helmed her own daytime talk show, both less successful ventures she examines self-critically in her memoir. Arguably, though, no one became as successful and synonymous with the genre as the Today show’s Katie Couric.Īs Couric puts it in her revealing new memoir, Going There, morning TV was the place where she could “comfortably converse with the Senate majority leader and the Teletubbies on the same morning.” Her willingness to share aspects of her personal life with viewers, from her two pregnancies progressing onscreen to allowing cameras into her colon after her husband’s death from cancer, helped her transcend simply being a news anchor: She became America’s morning show sweetheart in the ’90s.
Even when the news business was less hospitable to women, the format helped launch the careers of broadcasters like Barbara Walters, Joan Lunden, and Jane Pauley.
Morning shows have always been the crown jewels (and cash cows) of network television, bringing in massive advertising dollars with their high-low mix of sit-downs with world leaders and often wacky cooking segments.
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