Women hail Couric's move to CBS anchor

NEW YORK -- When people used to ask Connie Chung if a woman would ever get to anchor the network evening news all by herself, she'd say: "Not in my lifetime."\nNow Chung, very much alive, calls Katie Couric's move to CBS "a watershed moment." And she's not the only one who confesses to feeling a shiver of pride. From women's rights leaders like Gloria Steinem and Eleanor Smeal to ordinary TV viewers to Couric's own 10-year-old daughter, a lot of people think her history-making ascension to sole anchordom is a pretty big deal.\nThere are serious caveats, of course. One is that it took more than half a century for a woman to cross the final frontier in TV news. And fewer and fewer people are watching network news anyway. And finally, CBS is dead last in the evening news race -- the main reason it needed to lure Couric, after all.\nBut all that isn't enough to spoil the happiness of Steinem, perhaps this country's most recognizable feminist, who chooses instead to imagine the sight of Couric assuming that anchor chair on her first night.\n"One thing is sure," said Steinem. "Women and girls will have their first vision of a female network anchor who is an authority on her own. Since we learn by example, there's no telling where that iconic image may lead."\nAnd all that talk of "perky" vs. "gravitas"? Besides the point, Steinem said. "I think she will give us back what we haven't had since Walter Cronkite -- a trusted messenger who conveys the human meaning of the news."\nEleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a former president of the National Organization for Women, said she was horrified to hear CBS's resident curmudgeon, Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes," tell Don Imus that he didn't know "anyone at CBS News who's pleased that (Couric) is coming here."\n"Move over a little more gracefully, boys!" Smeal said with a chuckle. She noted how on-air television and radio jobs have historically been one of the toughest fields for women to conquer. NOW mounted challenges to station licenses in the 1970s that enabled women like Chung and Jane Pauley to move ahead in the industry, she said.\nSo Couric's move "is a serious marker," Smeal said. "We've cracked it." It's only too bad, she added, that in so many fields that women struggle to enter, "by the time we enter them, the institution itself is in trouble."\nStill, she noted, "Katie's salary kind of makes up for that!" (Couric is said to have signed a five-year deal at near her current salary of about $15 million.)\nCouric's move to CBS comes 30 years after Barbara Walters began a troubled two-year experiment anchoring alongside Harry Reasoner. Two decades later, in 1993, Chung tried it with Dan Rather. That attempt also failed, and Chung left CBS.\n"Barbara and I were in an awkward position," Chung, now 59, said in an interview. "The male anchor was asked to move over a few inches from a chair that he had filled with, um, his entire bottom. So the un-welcome mat was placed out there for us."\nChung hates the word "perky," so often used to describe Couric. "It's almost as annoying as 'gravitas,'" she said, referring to the word lately used to describe what Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather had, and Couric might not. "Actually, I found those three fellows quite identical," Chung says.\nGeneva Overholser, a former ombudsman of The Washington Post, has her own dismissive definition of "gravitas": "Isn't it a Greek word for mayo?"\nOverholser, now a professor based at the Washington bureau of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, said people are forgetting that Brokaw himself was a "Today" anchor, and thus he too was once seen as possibly lightweight. As for Couric, Overholser was hugely impressed when interviewed by her recently. "I went home to my husband and said, 'Boy, Katie Couric really knows her stuff!'"\nMany people who don't even watch TV news say they feel Couric's new position is important, at least symbolically. Kristan Phipps, 35, of Laporte, Minn., said she prefers to get her news on the radio. Still, she said, "For as long as I can remember, it's always been a male. For her to be in that kind of position is important. It's symbolic."\nEven Couric's 10-year-old daughter, Carrie, was said to have been swayed by the history argument. The New York Times reported she told her mom at a family meeting that she should choose CBS, because that would make her "the first woman in that job by herself."\nWhatever momentum Couric has going into the job, she will inevitably be judged by factors other than her reporting and anchoring skills, says Steven Reschly, who teaches history at Truman State University in Missouri and confesses he "hasn't watched the evening news with much interest since Cronkite."\n"Analysis of her performance will be highly gendered -- hairstyle, clothing, demeanor, aggressiveness -- does she have (what it takes) to compete with Bill O'Reilly?" Reschly said. "It will be fun to watch this play out"