Harry Gregory

“Katie Couric Leaves ABC News for Yahoo,” by Liz Raftery, Yahoo! News, Nov 25, 2013 01:09 PM ET

This article provides a fitting final blog of the semester. It converges the discussions in COMM 2107 Women in the Media with those in COMM 2101 Writing for Digital Media. It hints at a parallel between the rise of the web for news distribution and the rise of opportunities for women. In Chapter 10 “Writing for Web Journalism” from Stovall’s Writing for the Mass Media the first paragraph on page 213, THE FUTURE, the author states:

The Web is no longer an add-on for the traditional media. Because of its speed, capacity, flexibility and ubiquity, the Web is becoming the dominant means of distributing news and information.

Katie Couric, a well-known woman in traditional media, is transitioning away from one of the most established names in traditional media, ABC News. “Yahoo News, the Internet giant, announced Monday” she will be a “Global Anchor.” Katie had this to say about her new organization:

It’s very exciting to be a part of a leading company at the intersection of content and technology. I have great admiration for Marissa Mayer and her team and their commitment to bringing news, entertainment and information to the Yahoo community across multiple platforms. Joining Yahoo offers a tremendous opportunity to reach people all around the world in the way that they’re using and consuming media today.

As a student in COMM 2107, Women in the Media, I feel compelled to emphasize that Marissa Mayer, Katie’s new boss at Yahoo, is also a woman. They are standing together on the leading edge “at the intersection of content and technology.”
On page 209 of Writing for the Mass Media Stovall states:

News and information must be gathered, tailored and disseminated in ways that fit the mobile devices that people carry around with them … It means that news that affects people’s lives must be delivered to them at the time and place where they are, not at some later date when it is convenient for the news organization to do so.

This dovetails back into the article:

The move is ‘part of Yahoo’s ongoing commitment to re-imagine how news and information is delivered and consumed,’ according to a news release. Couric will make her debut on Yahoo in 2014 and will continue to host her daytime talk show Katie.

In a related irony, the Yahoo News app for android was updated on Nov. 18, just one week prior to this article. So, tune in to the future, or do we now say click in?
Read the full article at this link: http://www.tvguide.com/News/Katie-Couric-Yahoo-ABC-News-1073902.aspx?rss=breakingnews