In the flood of coverage of Katie Couric's debut last night, one reality has been conspicuously absent. Didn't it strike anyone as ironic that they finally gave a woman the coveted "solo anchor chair" at the point when the evening news has dribbled into irrelevancy? In the annals of journalism and opportunity for women, it's too little, too late.
You've all seen the numbers that show the continual hemorrhage of viewers from these network broadcasts. The audience is getting older, feebler, and less valuable to advertisers. Anyone who cares even a little bit about the news will pick it up during the course of the day from the chirping fragmentorium of websites, RSS feeds, mobile devices, emails and other sources.
What's more, in an era where conventional authority figures have lost (and squandered) their power to command and control - where we find our nuclei of truth in user-generated content and word-of-mouth - the traditional "Voice of God" newscaster is on his way to orotund obsolescence.
Katie, by contrast, is the Voice of Goddess. Her success on the Today Show was because she played the role of the gentle conveyer of America's soul from the torment of our dream life to the tribulations of our waking life.
That's why the debate over whether she has the gravitas to anchor the desk completely misses the point. As does the invocation of Walter Cronkite, a hammy attempts to prove a legitimate generational transfer of power. I don't think that we expect or want Daddy in the Desk Chair anymore. We'd rather have John Stewart and Stephen Colbert refract the news rather (sic) than report it. Or have Katie deliver it without male self-importance and grandiosity.
So Katie will do great given what we want out of the news today. And she would have done great back in the day, as well. In times of great national tragedy and stress, when the male anchor is supposed to rise to the occasion to bind us together, Katie will play the role that women have played anthropologically for millions of years: healers, receivers of stories, tribal reservoirs of empathy.
Katie's numbers were huge, yesterday, no doubt a result of CBS's well-crafted PR effort and a genuine national affection for a woman who seems to actually possess some measure of authenticity. (In that way, she is the anti-Dan Rather, whose coiled intensity also came from a real place). Too bad her ascension didn't happen ten or twenty years ago, when being a news anchor really meant something to the culture.