Thinking about invading those people’s privacy still makes me anxious. I remember walking up to one of the girls’ houses and knocking tentatively, hoping no one would answer—when a tearstained woman opened the door.
“I’m so sorry about your daughter,” I said. I wasn’t much older than the child she’d lost; I thought about my own mother. “We’re covering what happened, and I was wondering if you might have a picture…”
To my profound surprise, the woman asked me to come in. She led me downstairs to the basement and pulled out a photo album full of pictures of her daughter—smiling, clowning around, posing with loved ones. I asked about a few of them. Then this grieving mother carefully extracted a pretty photo and told me I could take it. I remember her saying, “Thank you for coming by and being so nice.”
In that moment, I was struck by how two complete strangers could find a way to connect in a crisis. In the best of worlds, reporters are people first, and I quickly learned the role we can play in helping validate a life lost. Journalists are often berated for their mercenary hunt for raw emotion—How did it feel to lose your job/husband/legs/child/home? But the human drama of these stories spoke to me, bringing out my ability to form a bond—albeit temporary—with people I had only just met.
NEWS DIRECTOR BRET Marcus made a habit of leaving encouraging notes and feedback for me, calling out a turn of phrase that nailed it. I still have them in a box of mementos. When I flew to Detroit to cover the crash of a Northwest Airlines jet, I described the debris-strewn site like this: “In the wreckage below, a baby doll, a man’s shoe, a coffeepot—remnants of the lives lost on Flight 255.” Bret jotted, Ms. Couric, very nice writing.
Another time, the face of the broadcast, local legend Jim Vance, walked by and dropped a note he’d scribbled on a legal pad: FYI. I think your work is great. You really lite up the screen with good stuff! I still have that one too.
I loved that other people were feeling what I was feeling—that this was where I belonged. The news business was perfect for me: the fast pace （I thrived in chaos）， the opportunity to write （turning what I’d witnessed into a compelling script）， the chance to help viewers understand what was going on and sort through the emotions that came with it.
The positive feedback gave me the courage to take it up a notch. One day I asked Bret if I could try anchoring. “I could do the morning cut-ins,” I suggested, the ones that would run at 25 minutes past the hour during the TODAY show.
He looked skeptical. “Sure…you can try.”
I got to the newsroom at 4:00 a.m. to write the script, cut the tape with the editor, and try to get comfortable in the anchor chair. I had no idea the gig would require me to operate the prompter myself, turning a knob under the desk to scroll the script. Of course I didn’t time it properly. So there I was, staring into the camera and earnestly reading the copy when the director said in my earpiece, “Katie, we’re already in a commercial.”
Later that morning, I stepped into Bret’s office. “What did you think? Can I try again?”
Bret paused. “Maybe if you go to a really, really, really small market somewhere.”
MILTON SHOCKLEY LOOKED embarrassed and spoke in a hushed tone so no one else could hear. “They want you to do a series called ‘No Time for Sex.’”
Ugh. Sweeps, the months when advertising rates are set, were all about eyeballs, and apparently someone thought it would be grabby to explore the dearth of intimacy plaguing two-career couples. But why me? Did they think I was going to appear on camera sitting seductively on a bed, legs crossed, in a short skirt? No thanks.
“Why not ask I. J. Hudson?” I suggested. “He’s married with children; he probably doesn’t have time for sex. I’m 27 and single. I have plenty of time!”
I agreed to do a series that was more in my wheelhouse—about the difficulty young professional women were having finding a man. We called it “Lonely Too Long” and opened each segment with the song of the same name by the Young Rascals.
It was a hot, zeitgeisty topic. At the time, a culture war was raging, with a new generation of women delaying marriage and motherhood to pursue careers. Armed with the pill and college degrees, many women my age were focused on making their marks.
And yet if our beloved Mary Richards embodied those tentative early steps （tongue-tied when trying to ask Mr. Grant for a raise）， the face—or caricature—of our generation was morphing into something else: Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction, whose steely, career-obsessed selfishness had turned her into a homewrecking bunny-boiler.