But “I find it puzzling that turf wars involving ruthlessly competitive men barely register,” Couric deadpans. Publicly, gossip tabloids drummed up the rivalry among top female broadcasters like Couric and Diane Sawyer into headline-grabbing “catfights.” The competition was real, partly because the slots available to women were so few, and partly because it always is for such jobs. Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. “At one point,” she writes, “even the head of HR was screwing a low-level producer.” But all this happened, she clarifies, in a workplace that sounds like the ad agency in Mad Men, rife with rumored liaisons between male higher ups and young female staffers, and with no policy in place to prevent them.

Couric’s partner at Today was Matt Lauer, with whom she enjoyed a particular on-screen chemistry, “the perception that we were like brother and sister.” She maintains that while she heard “whispers” of Lauer’s affairs and found them “gross,” she had no idea of the allegations of sexual harassment that would cost Lauer his job in 2017. Going There arrives accompanied by a long, tortuous profile in New York magazine by Rebecca Traister, a piece that wrestles with both the insane privilege Couric enjoyed at the summit of her success-she accepted a salary of $15 million to anchor the CBS evening news in 2006-and the floridly misogynistic media industry in which she won it.

The book satisfies the appetite for two types of voyeurism: the desire to peek into the lives of the rich and famous, and the wish to see them do penance for the sins they committed along the way. Reading it was a two-day crash course in the American infatuation with Couric’s wholesome smile and cap of tousled brunette hair, spiced by her late-life regrets over how she once handled everything from race and gender to homelessness. By the time I hit page 50, she’d already finagled me into her corner. But resistance to this book, appropriately titled Going There, appears futile.

As such, you might think I’d be the last person in America to be won over by it.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers.īut note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.Īll prices were up to date at the time of publication.Īs someone who never watched a full episode of the Today show or really any network newscast after leaving home for college, I can say with confidence that Katie Couric meant absolutely nothing to me when I picked up her new memoir.

Katie couric book 2021