The Wall Street Journal broke a terribly large piece of media news this week—CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is leaving the network after the elections, before her contract is up. That they had this story and not, say, the Times—who generally handle the TV media beat pretty well and on their own, thank you—is a nice coup for Murdoch's newest acquisition. It took a little while for the Times to catch up, but they came out last night with their own story on the meeting that ended Couric's career. (Amusingly, they credit "press reports in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere on Thursday" for breaking the Journal's exclusive scoop. Petty!) While some speculate as to what Katie will do next, or when she'll leave, Henry Blodget wonders who killed her. We're inclined to believe she killed herself.

What Blodget means is, who at this meeting handed the story to the Journal. He thinks it had to be one of the attendees—"CBS CEO Les Moonves, CBS News president Sean McManus, Katie's agent, Alan Berger of the Creative Artists Agency, and Katie herself"—but it really could've been anyone who heard about the meeting second- or third-hand. Regardless, the 'WSJ' story made it seem like CBS was dumping Katie to save money and "cap a difficult episode for CBS." The Times sounds a bit more like Katie just hates the job.

Of course, having Katie leave on her own volition would be embarrassing for CBS, but in the long run quite a bit less damaging than forcing her out and having her sue for a couple million, like one of their last anchors did.

Anyway she won't go host Larry King Live now because a) Larry King will never retire and b) that job is Seacrest's, dammit.

[Silicon Alley Insider]