Katie Couric Offered Pay Cut to Stay at Crappy Job
In your rearranged Wednesday media column: CBS laughably asks Katie Couric to stay, New Yorker fact checking goes above and beyond, AOL stock shakes off HuffPo's purchase price, Keith Olbermann is as calm and dignified as always, and Joshy Tyrangiel, profiled.
- Here's a laugher: CBS has reportedly asked Katie Couric to stay on through the 2012 elections for a "significantly" lower salary. Rather than, you know, going off to make lots of money elsewhere with some stupid talk show and trying to forget decrepit old CBS News forever. Ha, I predict Katie's response would be like "Ummm lemme think about it real quick HELL NO." But in an angrier, scarier voice, while swigging gin.
- For its new Lawrence Wright story on Scientology, The New Yorker had to sit there and talk to the Scientology spokesperson for eight hours, just for fact checking. Sounds terrible! David Remnick is now a Scientologist. I hope it was worth it.
- Keith Kelly points out that AOL's stock decline since buying HuffPo has knocked $315 million in value off the company—exactly what they paid for HuffPo! This is just "pricing in," or some other standard Wall Street term. It also indicates that investors don't "believe" that HuffPo will help AOL "make money," but we'll stop before we get too technical. (Although the deal did make newspaper stocks rise! There's hope for newspapers yet, as long as they purchase expensive internet companies.)
- In order to ensure that his transition from MSNBC to Current TV is as dignified and smooth as possible, Keith Olbermann is now having his rep argue with MSNBC about which network had/ has more subscribers on the day that Keith Olbermann joined said network. Because that is an important issue. Never change, Keith.
- Is Bloomberg Businessweek better than The Economist? No. Could it become better, under the leadership of whiz kid editor Josh Tyrangiel? I don't know, but here's a profile of the guy, by Zeke Turner.
[Photo via Getty]