MSM Blunder: K-Cour's Lippy Listening Tour

Introducing another New York Inquirer feature: every week we'll bring you a big ole' blunder from that rambling machine, the Mainstream Media.

So where better to start with the MSM than with Katie Couric, the departed Today Show host who will soon be sitting in the chair once filled by Dan Rather? K-Cour and the nightly news, it's getting twice the bang for your buck.

Don't get us wrong, she's a pioneer as the first woman to anchor an evening news broadcast. Cheers to that. But K-Cour, well . . .

In order to figure out how to become one of the bigwigs in the biz, she's currently conducting a "listening tour" around the U.S., listening to, well, we're not sure. But she's certainly making lots of jokes (unfortuantelly not good ones).

On Monday she was in Clearwater, Florida -- multitasking. Yes, it was part of the listening tour, but the early-morning breakfast was also a benefit for the American Cancer Society. Lots of joking (read: not news). And it was "brief."

So the blunder runs deep -- we'd be happier if she was sitting at home reading ten newspapers a day and choking down nonfiction tomes, biographies and policy papers -- but instead let's point at a specific, telling moment and wrap. From the St. Petersburg Times report:

“What are you most excited about in going from a morning show to an evening show?” said Couric, reading one question herself.

“That would be one word: Sleep . . .

That's what the news biz needs: sleep.

(Photo from flickr.)