Jason Linkins |
Posted Thursday April 12, 2007 at 10:04 AM
There are those that may find the Katie Couric plagiarism scandal to be "third-rate"--but that didn't stop the New York Sun's David Blum from working himself into a first-rate lather. Right from jump, he asks the question that just about anyone with a thimble full of common sense might ask:
For $15 million a year, wouldn't you think Katie Couric could find the time in her day to reflect on her own feelings in her Couric & Co. blog on the cbsnews.com Web site -- and not on those of a Wall Street Journal reporter named Jeffrey Zaslow?
Indeed. Plagiarism, as a general rule, lacks the sexed-up underbelly allure of the drugs-lust-death cycle of, say, all things Dannielynica. But for anyone who plies their trade with words, it's a crime as malodorous as a corpse--a sin that should rightly halt careers and set the highest of bars for redemption.
Blum certainly unleashes a goodly measure of scorn on Couric, her handlers, and the network itself. But, in an interesting pivot, Blum goes beyond the momentary sin to bring a damning case against CBS. In short: it's not the plagiarism that's the problem, it's the lack of leadership.
- CBS: "Ham-handed" again. CBS doesn't just have the Couric stink lingering in their front office, they've got the Imus stench as well. Blum doesn't entirely connect the dots, but he notes the hemming and hawing in both instances: the infighting on Imus, the sloppy way the Couric piece was labelled as being flawed due to "omission" rather than outright theft. Not to mention that Rathergate, and all its attendant mishegoss, is not far from anyone's mind.
- Blum gets the "Web 2.0" angle precisely right as well--the essential ingredient to a good blog is authenticity. "But with the expansion of the blogosphere, where dueling networks routinely parlay the cult of personality into a weapon in the publicity war, it seems sad that Ms. Couric can't play the game by the same rules as her NBC counterpart Brian Williams does. Anyone who has ever read Mr. Williams's highly personal blog entries on the NBC News Web site knows he wrote them himself."
- Thus, this goes beyond mere content. Rudderless CBS, alist in the seas of e-media, end up looking like bunglers. Who's running the technology show? Who's giving the orders, where these blogs are concerned, and are they clear on concept? Is there a codified e-media approach at work at CBS, or is it nothing more than slapped together frippery? Not to mention: what sort of message does this send to shareholders?
- Couric: writer or reader? Citing examples of Couric's less-than-stellar grasp of the written word, Blum comes tantalizingly close to asking the question outright--who was in charge of evaluating Couric's off-camera abilities? Who was in charge of oversight? If it was the fired producer, Melissa McNamara, to what extent is she culpable? Did she literally lift Zaslow's words off of his page and onto Couric's blog? If she didn't, who did? And what does this say about the quality of McNamara's colleagues?
While a bit scattered, and, as cited above, sometimes lacking in those "close the circle" moments, Blum's piece is a necessary debate-changer, moving beneath the surface crime and getting right into the befouled DNA of a reeling news outfit. As for Couric, Blum stops short of a full evisceration, but he hammers home a wise warning: if Couric wants to salvage her reputation and keep CBS News in the game, it's incumbent on her to fill what appears to be a gaping leadership vacuum.
RELATED:
Couric in the Eye of Plagiarism Case [New York Sun]
