Howie Kutz's powder-puff spin of Couric in WP.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

Up Close And Too Personal
Katie Couric, Center of Attention, Says She Just Wants to Do Her Job

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 15, 2006; Page C01

She is already the most heavily scrutinized, psychoanalyzed and gossiped-about anchor in network history, and she hasn't yet uttered a single "good evening" on a CBS newscast.

Katie Couric says she aims to add a commentary segment and more positive stories to the newscast, but "it's not going to be smiley-face happy news." (CBS)
Katie Couric's wardrobe has been analyzed by the Wall Street Journal, her makeup assailed in USA Today, her dating life examined by Parade magazine, her fitness for nightly news duty debated by columnists, cable combatants, bloggers and bloviators.

"I'm really focused on work and trying to tune the other stuff out, because it could potentially drive you absolutely out of your mind," Couric says in a conference room down the hall from the new set being constructed for her Sept. 5 debut.

When she takes the helm of the "CBS Evening News," Couric's challenge to NBC's Brian Williams and ABC's Charlie Gibson will mark the first such three-way showdown since Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings initially went at it in the early 1980s. But the media landscape has shifted dramatically since then, leaving this trio fighting for a shrinking slice of the audience and increasingly taking their battle online. (cont'd)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401194.html

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. ....there is no more news - it is all about entertainment and advertising