At a moment when it seems like every other TV news anchor is starting a digital venture, podcast or YouTube channel, Katie Couric has a few words of advice. The former CBS Evening News and NBC Today show anchor launched Katie Couric Media in 2017 with a newsletter, and it now has a staff of nearly 50 producing podcasts, social video content and more.  

Couric spoke with The Hollywood Reporter as she looks to expand her entertainment business with the launch of Barolo Films (it’s named after an inside joke with her husband), which will develop and produce documentaries, unscripted and scripted entertainment, with a comedy adaptation of her 2021 memoir Going There already in development at Disney’s 20th Television. 

I wanted to start with the entrepreneurial nature of what you’ve tried to do with Katie Couric Media, because it does seem timely. All of a sudden there’s lots of people in the media and news space that are exploring this, and I wanted to get your perspective as someone who has had a lot of success there. 

I think I realized very early on that I was an early adopter to digital media. And I sensed, even when I was at CBS, that the landscape, the terra firma of journalism, was really shifting under my feet, and that linear television and traditional media was — you could sense it was going to be usurped by this whole new way of delivering news and information. 

I think that’s one of the reasons in 2014 I went to Yahoo, because I saw a possibility for this merging of media and technology that wasn’t really being done online, bringing traditional media values and sensibility, journalistic values and sensibilities, having it merge with the technology that could deliver it in a way that was very much of the moment and was only going to grow. 

(In 2018) I had just done something called Gender Revolution about our changing notion of gender identity. I thought, how can I continue to do what I love, and that I hopefully am pretty good at explaining the world and synthesizing complicated concepts and delivering important news and information in a wholly new way. And so that’s when we started Katie Couric Media. I didn’t want to call it Katie Couric Media, because I didn’t want it to be all about me. But at the same time, I was in journalism when it was possible to become a household name, and I had to leverage that going into this new environment.  

We realized early on, you had to sort of do everything, everywhere, all at once. And I think one thing I learned from Yahoo, which never developed into sort of the platform that I was hoping it would, at least for news, is that you have to iterate content to suit different platforms. And so that’s why we started with newsletters, a six day a week newsletter called Wake Up Call, which really is a quick read about what’s happening with some features and general human interest stories and even affiliate sales. And then it expanded to a food newsletter, health and wellness newsletter and environmental newsletter, a LinkedIn newsletter called Wake Up Call At Work. I often say that mass media has become an oxymoron, and niche media is really the way to go. But how do you in aggregate have enough niche media to sort of sustain a whole media company? 

I mean, this is one of the fundamental questions that everybody’s dealing with, because as you said, you have this direct relationship with your readers or viewers, however they choose to get their information from you. But as you noted, some people are really reading newsletters, other people might be watching video on social platforms. Others might be listening to a podcast. It’s very fractured. So how have you tried to both take advantage of the fact that these platforms can give you a wider reach and that direct connection, while also navigating the challenges of that fractured environment? 

It’s a big adjustment. You know, when I used to do the Today show, or even the CBS Evening News, you’d work all day for a broadcast that was happening at a certain time. I remember at CBS, I urged them to continue to send people to Cbsnews.com to cover primaries or conventions. And honestly, I think some of the people there thought that I was out of my mind. I remember when I solicited questions at CBS about the Gulf oil spill. Because I think sometimes when you’re covering things on a daily basis, you have certain blind spots about what people want to know, or their level of knowledge and understanding. And the number two guy at CBS said, “I think it’s beneath the anchor of the CBS Evening News to be on the Twitter.”

So you can see the attitude was very much against adapting to technology. I think part of it was a desire to not cannibalize their product and to not make it available in a place where maybe they couldn’t get ratings for views. And advertising was shifting too. So there was that big transition period, I think that happened between 2014 and now, where everybody had to shift. Also, if you think about it, most of the people who are running these networks are older, and they just want to slide into retirement and not disrupt what they’re doing too much. So all these things worked against traditional media adjusting to the new realities of a digital landscape. And I think I was, in a way, very well positioned, because I had developed this parasocial relationship with my viewers, and I was a household name at a time where that was actually possible. It’s much more difficult now to be known to a huge swath of the population because of fragmentation. So I had developed the trust of an audience when there were much fewer options, that put me in a in good stead to transition to a digital media operation. 

You know, it’s funny, if you think back to the late aughts, early 2010s, everyone was seeing what was happening with newspapers and magazines. And I think you could kind of see that it was going to come to television and the other forms of media eventually. But when something is so lucrative and popular, it can be very hard to look around the corner and recognize what’s coming. 

It’s hard because I don’t think these more traditional broadcasters or newspapers were giving people the opportunity. People were under contract. They wanted to own the talent. I hate that word, but you know what I mean, owning the reporters or the journalists. They didn’t want them to be available to other places. Now, I think that they see it’s additive to what they’re doing on their primary platform, and that if they don’t diversify their portfolio, so to speak, these reporters are going to be left with very few options. That’s why I think it’s so interesting to see suddenly not only an exodus of people from broadcast news or people who are being let go for financial reasons, and now they’re realizing that they can develop the same relationship with an audience, a different relationship, and in some cases, a better relationship online than they could on linear television. 

You’re launching a Substack. Can you explain what that is and why you decided to join that platform? 

I’m on Tiktok and Instagram and YouTube and newsletters and Threads, but Substack, I think, provides an opportunity to really kind of put together a community on steroids, where people can talk to each other and comment and ask questions, which they do on Instagram. But it also is an opportunity to monetize what you’re doing. And we have more than 40 employees and consultants who are working at our company, and so we have to make money so we can pay for the journalism storytelling they’re doing. And I think that Substack has really exploded, we talked to them, and they were super excited to get our work on their platform. And I think it just provides another opportunity to churn out both written content, video interviews, live interviews, conversations. I think all these different media personalities can help prop up other media personalities, and it’s almost like its own very of the moment network. 

There’s a network effect at play with Substack and a lot of these platforms, on YouTube as well, where in the old days, you would have a literal network that would have a roster of talent, and one person would go on this show and that show. Now, I think you’re kind of seeing these networks kind of form naturally. 

It’s a lot of cross colonization, which is really a good thing. And I think that’s something I’m excited about. And I want to explore doing even more with more people who, who I feel are aligned with the way I see the world. 

Let’s talk about Barolo films. Why did you decide to launch this venture in the entertainment scripted and unscripted space to expand the purview of what you’re doing in the documentary and media space? 

This philosophy about being on all sorts of platforms with storytelling seemed a natural extension of that. I’ve done a number of documentaries, and I really appreciate the power of documentaries to help people understand critically important issues. I did one called Fed Up about the obesity epidemic. I did Under The Gun about the scourge of gun violence in this country. I did something called Gender Revolution about our changing notion of gender identity. And then I did a scripted show called Unbelievable, and it was based on this very powerful ProPublica article called An Unbelievable Story of Rape. And I read that, and I said, this story has to be told. This has to be more than a ProPublica article. I think I was instrumental in getting it optioned, because the people at ProPublica appreciated that a journalist was involved in a scripted version of what they were doing, and I found that to be a really rewarding experience.  

Now that you’ve staffed up at Barolo, how do you see the slate taking shape in terms of the balance between unscripted, documentary, scripted. What would you say is the overarching ethos that connects the projects that you hope to develop? 

I’ve always really loved in documentaries, the things that connect the dots, that help people take a step back and understand the bigger role they play in our history and society. Right now, I’m working with Dawn Porter on something about women’s health inequities, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about and looking at for three years, but how women have been largely ignored by the medical establishment and medical researchers, and the impact that has had on specific diseases and illnesses that affect women.  

(I’m working with) Joanne (Lipman) who is an incredible veteran journalist who developed the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition. She was editor in chief of USA Today, she teaches journalism at Yale. I’ve known her for a long time. And we’re developing a doc on the devolution of the news business, all the things you and I were talking about, how fragmented it is and the impact on society, and the threats to free speech. It’s such a monstrous topic, but I think so important. I think I gravitate towards things I feel passionately about. I don’t know if we have a specific lane, but I think it’s things that I think are big societal issues that need to be solved, but without understanding them, it’s hard to solve them.  

And we’ve got a scripted project based on my memoir (Going There), which is fun. I was approached by a network executive after it came out, and she believed it would make a really good television series. As I was writing it, I thought it did sound like a little bit like it was tailor made for a series, because it kind of has everything. It has a lot of ups and downs and triumphs and tragedies. I teamed up with Eric Tanenbaum and 20th Studios and Gail Lerner, who’s a fabulous writer who’s had her own tragic experience with her children and still managed to find joy and humor in in life. We’re going to give that a go, but who knows? Anything can happen. It’s very unpredictable.  

I was going to ask about Going There. To take something that is autobiographical like that, and adapt it for a comedic function has got to be a daunting task for you, I’m sure. 

Well, that’s why there are a lot of people who know a lot more about this than I do who are involved. But I think there’s something very authentic about a true story. And I think you can call from that kind of IP,  something that’s really hard to fabricate and hard to make up in a writer’s room when there are real life situations that you can draw from. 

There is something to that, I do think that we are in a moment where authenticity rules. I think that might be part of the reason why you and others are having success as independent entrepreneurs, because you are authentic, and you can present that authenticity. And maybe there is something where that can translate to the scripted space, where people can see that and then recognize that, oh, Katie’s involved, even though it’s a comedy and it’s scripted. It’s not literally what necessarily happened, but  there is an authenticity to it. 

And a realness, right? I think that there’s so much bullshit out there, that people want things that actually are real. And I think also,all the veneer of and the show businessy-ness of television news is kind of stripped away when you’re sitting at your desk with no makeup and you’ve got a ring light shining reflecting in your glasses and your hair isn’t done, that people appreciate. I think it plays on this whole authenticity idea that you brought up, that you’re kind of being straight with them. 

It’s also great, especially now in this era of corporate pressure where there’s a lot of what they’re calling anticipatory obedience, self-censorship and a fear about reporting what’s happening, that I don’t have any corporate overlords saying “you can’t say that,” or I don’t have (former GE CEO) Jack Welch writing me a note, or somebody telling me to tone it down or don’t talk about this as much. I’m at the point in my career happily where I don’t have to worry about that. You see it happening. 

More so recently, frankly, than I have in quite a while. 

Right, and it’s really terrifying. There was always this very strong division between the corporation, although when we started to promote NBC shows on the Today show, there was that kind of intersection happening. But generally, I think people kept the journalism to the journalists and corporate quarterly profits to the corporations. Of course, we cared about ratings, so there was always that overlap. But people were really left alone to cover stories as they saw fit. And now, of course, you’re seeing that change, and it’s really terrifying and really bad for our country. 

I think it’s connected to the business models that we discussed earlier. When things are really lucrative, it’s easy to just say, keep doing your thing. We’ll keep collecting the profits. But when everything gets pressured… 

When everything’s contracting, right? Yeah, exactly. And people are trying to still have that quote, unquote, mass appeal. That makes it difficult, and it makes it harder to cover news because you don’t want to lose people who ascribe to a certain ideology. And that’s why it’s become so bifurcated. 

A version of this story first appeared in the June 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.