Katie to CBS Viewers -- How Do I Say Goodbye?
We'll have to settle for just one of two big answers tonight: A knee-length black dress topped by a fitted white jacket. As for the other, you may in fact be the one to decide.
Katie Couric made her long-gestating and heavily-hyped debut on "The CBS Evening News," and she began by quickly answering the question about her wardrobe and wrapped up by avoiding the question about what her signature sign-off would be, asking viewers to make suggestions. The opening featured a voiceover by Couric's predecessor, Walter Cronkite.
As for the rest of the broadcast, CBS correspondent Lara Logan and Hulk Hogan both figured prominently, as did Suri Cruise. But producers clearly meant to convey the seriousness of their journalistic intention by delving into a multi-segment story about the Taliban (where Logan went into a Taliban camp) and the War on Terror, which included a sit-down interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In fact, while CBS' lead story was nearly ten minutes long, ABC's "World News" was cycling through several of the day's top stories, including the Ford Motor Company CEO's resignation and a piece about oil prices.
On the lighter side, Couric Day One also showed us the first photos of Suri Cruise in Vanity Fair magazine and included an op-ed-style commentary by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock which invoked wrestler Hulk Hogan in an orthographically confusing segment titled freeSpeech. (Rush Limbaugh will be the mouthpiece on Thursday.) And Couric deferred her decision on a signature sign-off, putting the ball squarely in her audience's court. For tonight, she went with, "I'm Katie Couric, thank you so much for watching, and I hope to see you tomorrow night."
We'd like you to give you the chance to help Katie decide, so take a stab at our suggestions.
