The News Business

From Michael Massing, former editor of the Columbia Journalism Review:

While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric's annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric's salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.

Of course this isn't really CBS's fault. Most people don't choose which news show to watch based on the quality of the reporting, but on whether they like the anchor. But this does point out the absurd salary structure at the heights of American corporate power. Does anybody think they couldn't get lots of charismatic people to apply for the job even if it only paid $2 million a year?