(R)evolution Brian Solis Interview with Katie Couric Part 2

8/8/2019 (R)evolution Brian Solis Interview with Katie Couric Part 2

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(R)evolutionBrian Solis

Interview with Katie CouricDecember 9, 2010

We live in interesting times and among today’s catalysts spurring

excitement and concern are social media…for it, as a movement, is a

great equalizer.

Now, here we are, challenged to rethink what we know and think we

know in order to compete for relevance now and in the future. As we

heard in Part 1 of (R)evolution, we are witnessing the impact of social

media on journalism and understanding how news travels differently

through social graphs.

In Part 2 of a three-part series with Kate Couric, anchor and managingeditor of the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC, we examinehow social media impacts not only real-time journalism, but also howto protect the consequence of fact-first journalism amongst a newgeneration that Tweets first and asks questions later. We also explorethe impact of new media on culture and society and how it influenceswho we are online as well as what we share and who we know.

Brian:You have information that can travel in ways that it could nevertravel before. How is that changing your world?

Katie:Yes, I think about that. I am dating myself with that Fabergeshampoo commercial. You are not as old as I am, but they, soon and so on, like one tells the other and it kind of has thisripple effect, and I think that is one of the wonderful thingsabout social media, it lives on in perpetuity. Maybe not inperpetuity, but it has a long – what do they call it – the long tail,or whatever, and it can exist and it can create conversation and

it is just yet another way of disseminating information. Youthink about how did people get information before this? Andsometimes I think, god, when I was in college, we had drawersand it was the Dewey Decimal System, and you would go tomicrofiche and all that stuff. And it is just amazing to me howeverything is just right there for you. I was talking to MattDamon, name dropper, I know, but Matt and I were chatting

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(R)evolution: Katie Couric – Fact-First Journalism and Digital Identity

earlier and I interviewed him for a piece I am doing in Glamour ,and he was talking about John Krakauer’s book about Pat Tillman, and I said I had actually interviewed Pat Tillman’s momfor 60 Minutes, and that there was also a documentary outabout Pat Tillman and his death, and how the military handled

it. And he said, “I am going to go find that interview.” So that is just a perfect example of having access to things that normallywe wouldn’t, and it hopefully will make us collectively besmarter, but there are a lot of concerns about that that I have,also about misrepresenting things on the Internet – I was justtalking to our foreign desk and we were saying how accuracyoften becomes a casualty of immediacy. And I have a lot of trepidation. I am excited about everything I am doing, but Isometimes worry about the negative things that have resultedfrom social media or the way the Internet currently works.

Brian:Let’s talk a little bit about that, because there is a balancebetween journalism, now that people are part of the equation inthis forum. The lifespan of a ReTweet is about an hour, and itdemonstrates the need to compete for attention all the time.And if information can just fizzle out that quickly, at the sametime, though it is how information spreads. And we see – thereis a saying that news no longer breaks; it Tweets. And formany individuals, especially…

Katie:Estelle must really like that.

Brian:Yes, it is very true that you will see the trending topic eventsbefore they are on air or in print or online.

Katie:Things bubble up and we look for that, too.

Brian:And it is almost like Twitters in the wire. You have the ability totake this – what I call the information gap, the time thatsomething Tweets to the time it is covered, it is defined by,let’s say the agility of the team getting the facts.

Katie:Or the access to broadcast.

Brian:Absolutely. And so how do we minimize that gap to still focus onFact-First news, to still renew the role of the journalist, but atthe same time still humanize the process, because people arevery much part of this equation; they feel part of the process if they are sharing and ReTweeting. But we will need goodinformation.

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Katie:There are no editors. There are no editors on Twitter andFacebook, and that is sort of the most critical element of accuracy in journalism is you check your sources, you doublesource things, you make sure something is accurate and noweverything is just blah. Just spills out there and sometimes you

can’t do that. The one advantage I have to say of not being on24/7 and you know I have worked at CNN and I did work forMSNBC is that we actually do have time to really validateinformation, to check it for accuracy. We were talking aboutthat. We had an Iranian intern during the whole protest anddemocracy movement in Iran, who was actually kind of synthesizing and evaluating some of the things she was gettingon Facebook and on Twitter, and contextualizing it for us. So bythe time we went on the air, it could be really kind of fleshedout. In a way there is no screen now for information. I think thatcan lend itself to not only factual inaccuracies, but sometimes it

is the context that matters. It is the perspective, you know.Now Sherrod is a verb. Somebody’s character could be totallyassassinated in a matter of seconds and spread like wildfirebefore someone says, hey, wait a second, has anybody lookedat her entire speech? Has anybody put this into context? Andso I think that is probably a recent glaring example of how thiscan happen. And I have also seen in my years in television howthis kind of need to be first or this kind of perhaps unvettedmaterial bleeds into mainstream media. And now magazinesthat never would have done that, you know, seem to, I thinkbecause of the competition and because the economic model

that currently exists in a declining viewership or readership forwhatever entity you are discussing, sometimes it will bleed intomore mainstream media, and things that we never would havedone we are more likely to do. And I have seen it happen hereat CBS and I have seen it happen at a lot of other organizations,and it is something you have to certainly be mindful of andconcerned about.

Brian:I believe that there is this fallacy, and you talked a little bit aboutit earlier in terms of you as in individual as well you as aprofessional and where is that balance in terms of what you

share? But I think one of the things that you are also touchingupon, especially for a journalist, is this need now to alsobecome part of the brand in the sense that as you are sharingyour stories, or reporting your stories, that you now need toconnect the dots to individuals to keep that story alive, torespond. Do you journalism – some call his entrepreneurial journalism, in the sense where you actually have to almost geta little bit of hustle behind what it is you are reporting.

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Katie:Yes, I think that is probably true. Yes, I mean certainly – I havebeen quite aggressive myself, and it is sometimes scary.Because I am used to running by things and most of the time Ido still, but you kind of are on your own, and you are kind of

thinking, well, what would be interesting? You want to maintainthe connection, so sometimes I think you feel pressured. Youare like, god, I haven’t done anything today. I am so boring.How I got up and made a cup of coffee and read the paper, andI cleaned my room or something, and you are thinking nobodyreally cares about that, but you do say, well, what isinteresting, or what did I just read? So it is kind of an insatiableappetite, I think, for doing it. But yes, I think that is sort of fun,too, though, because you are almost creating, not necessarily asecond act for yourself, but creating a new persona, which isfun, but also you have to be careful. I’ve had a couple of

experiences where I am like, oh, god, I shouldn’t have donethat. Or, I shouldn’t have Tweeted that. Not that often, becauseI always now say if I write this would I be o.k. if it was on thefront page of the New York Times. You can create this newpersona, but you also have to be a little bit careful that whatyou are communicating is your authentic self. And I think in away, that is why this has been so liberating for me, because Ihave such little time to reveal my authentic self on the eveningnews just by virtue of its format. That when I am doing a webshow, or I am doing something on Twitter or Facebook or those YouTube videos which I need to get into again, because I have

sort of slacked off on that. All this stuff takes time, by the way.

Brian:Absolutely.

Katie:But it does give me an outlet where I feel like this is kind of who Iam and you may see a very serious person on the eveningnews, but I am multidimensional and these are kind of thethings that I am interested in and maybe you are too.

Brian:What do you think this means to traditional journalists that havebeen in the game for a while as well as those coming out of J

school? How does the idea that they now need to be part of thisstory as an individual, as this digital persona? How does thischange everything?

Katie:Well, it changes a lot. People ask me who are graduating fromcollege, or J school, what should I do? And, because you seebroadcast journalism kind of declining and digital journalismand social media sort of increasing, where are you going to find

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the point where there is some kind of place where they meet?Where they intersect? Because I firmly believe that contentand accuracy and fairness and fact-finding and truth telling arestill incredibly important for democracy. And I actually amgoing to send you a link to a Ted Koppel piece that he just

wrote all about advocacy journalism and sort of what does thatmean and it was very interesting. Very old school, but reallyinteresting. So I think there has to be still some of thestandards that traditional media has – the standards that wehave followed through the years. I want them to live on, and Ithink that it is really important that as we go from immediacyor reach, that some of those qualities endure. I wish I knew theanswer to how everything was going to shake out. I do knowthat it is really important and I think this is your wholephilosophy that to be a leader in information, you have toembrace this social media and all the new technology that is

available now. It just makes perfect sense, and I see somepeople, my colleagues who pooh-pooh it or let’s face it, it iseasy. You get set in your ways, you get in a business fordecades and you are used to doing things a certain way, but Ifeel bad for them, because I feel like they are just going totruncate their careers by not reaching out and takingadvantage of this. I think it is kind of an ageless enterprise. It iso.k. if you are in your 50s or 60s to be a part of this. I think thefastest growing group on Facebook is older people.

Brian:Exactly.

Katie:My dad is 90 and he just got an email. My daughter had anassignment to write about him in World War II, and he wroteeverything to her on email. He was a print journalist for manyyears. And so I think it is here to stay. It is just how do wemarshal it and how do we control it in a way that – and I don’tmean control it in a negative way, but how to manage it, Iguess, is a better word.

Brian:Every medium needs a leader, and the fact that you areexperimenting here and you are finding the balance in real time

that others are learning from it. At the same time, individualshave access to so much information it is overwhelming, but Ithink part of society, part of our culture has to - we all have aresponsibility to understand, not just how to consume, not justhow to create it, but also how to filter it, how to get the contextinvolved in all of this so that we are creating, sharing, andconsuming information that matters not just to us, but topeople like us. And it changes now, not just how information

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travels, but how people are forming relationships online. It isnot just about who you know or who you are related to, but it isalso who is like you? For example, Facebook and Twitter nowhave switched to not just who you know, or who you may know,but people you should know.

Katie:Or would like to know.

Brian:And it is all based on the key words of what you Tweet, yourthemes that you consistently talk about and I think that ispowerful. That is going to change – it doesn’t just changerelationships, but it actually improves, I think, for the journalist,the ability to connect great stories to communities that allalready existing who want to consume that. It is just going torequire the connection.

Katie:Oh definitely. That has been a big push on my part here too,because what I said to you earlier about the fact that peoplearen’t in front of their televisions at 6:30 that there may becritically important information that we need to push out todifferent communities, whether it is a cancer community abouta new CT scan for lung cancer or a new treatment or a clinicaltrial or something about heart disease. I am really interested inmedical news, just because of my personal experiences, and soit is really about getting it to them. Not them coming to you,because those days are over. I couldn’t agree with you more. Ithink any tools we have to help us do that are great. I am still

adjusting to how this works and part of it gives me the creeps.Like, I am supposed to have a relationship, but I don’t evenknow these people. It takes some getting used to, but I think asI said, if we manage and marshal these incredibleopportunities, it is only a positive thing.

One of the things that I have wrestled with is the anonymity, howpeople can be very mean and nasty online and I think probablythey always have been, but back in the day when I started atthe Today Show, I used to get some really mean letters aboutwhat I was wearing or my hair looked like a ski slope for an

adventurous sparrow – I remember some old man wrote methis, and hated my dress. It was funny, because it was just soinsulting. But, you know, I would say probably most of the timethe assistants who open the mail, Nancy Fields, this really greatlady, would just laugh and throw them away. Now everybody’sgot a platform. And theirs words often live in perpetuity. And,because they are anonymous, and don’t have to be heldaccountable for what they say, it is shocking to me how uncivil

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some of the exchanges are and how, quite frankly, vulgar a lotof them are. In the comments section of – I remember readingabout Jenna Bush getting married, and I thought, oh, that’snice. She looked pretty. And then I started reading thecomments. And it was appalling, actually, and I actually have

had to learn how to deal with that and my colleagues laugh,because I always want to say, can I write Bite Me to thatperson? Or, something really rude? And they are like, No!Don’t engage, and once in a while…

Brian:Kitty, only if you hash-tag it, then it is o.k.

Katie:[Laughter] I sometimes do kind of write people back, but I amvery mindful, like if that was ReTweeted, or if somebody putthat out there, that it would be o.k.

Brian:This is really something that a lot of people haven’t startedthinking about, because it is not so much the anonymity on theweb, it is now your personal brand in front of some of this veryharsh things that are being said, and people are – we don’t talkabout leaders in terms of helping people understand what isbefore them as much as we should. And actually, I think it is abig movement of mine at the same time, looking at parents,looking at bosses, looking at peers, to help one another realize just how powerful this is and how lasting it is. With every Tweet, with every comment, with every post, we arecontributing to our digital shadow. We are creating this online

persona of everything we share and if we are not careful, wemight be steering that in an irreversible way, or something thatis going to take a long time to bring back in a direction weneed.

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(R)evolution Brian Solis Interview with Katie Couric Part 2