Katie Couric's New Media Venture Looks for Partner Companies With 'Ethos'
*By Madison Alworth*
Katie Couric is all in with new media. Since the journalist left Yahoo roughly one year ago, she's expanded her own production company, Katie Couric Media, joined forces with theSkimm newsletter, and entered the fight for gender equality.
“I’ve sort of been staffing up, and we are doing a number of interesting projects," Couric, a seasoned vet of the more traditional CBS and ABC networks, said this week in an interview on Cheddar.
"We’re teaming up with companies that have kind of an ethos and social responsibility side that resonates with me. So companies like Procter and Gamble, I’ve been working with them because they’ve been on the forefront of gender equality, and \[chief brand officer\] Mark Pritchard is an amazingly enlightened individual in corporate america. And P&G is a fantastic company, so I'm proud to be associated with them.”
P&G ($PG) is sponsoring one of Couric's first video projects with new media company theSkimm.
"I’m doing a series called 'Getting There' with theSkimm, because it’s really designed to inspire younger women to show how very successful women got there ー from Ina Garten to Issa Rae to Eva Chen to Bozoma St. John to Jennifer Fisher to Bethenny Frankel ー all really successful women in their own right."
TheSkimm, which was founded in 2012, has since grown to [6 million subscribers](http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/11/with-video-and-audio-the-skimm-pushes-further-into-the-daily-routines-of-its-6-million-readers/), according to the latest estimates. The newsletter company expanded into video and audio last year, a natural extension for the millennial-focused start-up.
Once the star of the "Today Show" and the "CBS Evening News," Couric is well aware that media was vastly different at the start of her career. “I always thank my lucky stars I went into television news when I went into television news, because it is completely different today,” she said.
But Couric isn't intimidated by change ー she's inspired by it.
“You have a lot of different platforms, you have to iterate the content to match the platform. I think it's challenging, because it is so fragmented and so niche and there is so much content out there," she said.
"On the other hand, that is presenting really exciting opportunities to do different things. I always like to be forward-thinking.”
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/katie-couric-media).
Integrity Marketing Group, nation's largest independent distributor of life and health insurance products, is showing its employees it cares. The company surprised its 5,500 employees with $125 million in cash payouts to those participating in the company's Employee Ownership Plan. Bryan Adams, CEO of at Integrity Marketing Group, and Steve Young, NFL Hall of Famer and chairman of the board at Integrity Marketing Group, join Cheddar News to talk about the announcement.
Anthony Tall, sports agent and president of Miracle Sports Agency, joins Cheddar News to talk about the challenges professional sports leagues are facing amid a surge in coronavirus cases across the U.S.
Todd Kaplan, Pepsi's Vice President of Marketing, joins Cheddar News to discuss the company's first-ever non-fungible token with its Pepsi Mic Drop genesis NFT collection.
This year, consumers might not be as surprised by what's under their trees as by the trees themselves. Despite a tighter market for trees, Stew Leonard's was able to secure its entire stock of Christmas trees from a supplier in Quebec. But some prices jumped this year as a result of increased costs for shipping and labor amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Cheddar's Chloe Aiello reports.
The parent company for Toys "R" Us, Tru Kids, was acquired by WHP Global in March 2021, and it vowed a return to the physical retail experience. On Tuesday, the company opened its U.S. flagship location in American Dream, a megamall based in East Rutherford, N.J.
The Cowboy State has become one of the world's top tax havens, according to the Pandora Papers, a trove of more than 11.9 million documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Washington Post. The papers reveal, among other things, how ultra-wealthy people from around the world move money into the U.S., invest, and spend it under a shroud of secrecy. Allison Tait, University of Richmond law professor, joined Cheddar to talk about Wyoming's laidback tax laws, their impact on the nation's economy, and provided some details on the financial arrangement known as the "cowboy cocktail."
Cheddar is looking back at the 12 biggest buzzwords of the year leading up to Christmas. The term for Day 9 is NFT. Definition: (noun) The abbreviation of non-fungible token, can be used as a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger.
Barbara Doran, CEO and Chief Investment Officer at BD8 Capital Partners, joined Wake Up With Cheddar's Brad Smith to break down results from Nike and talk broader market movement, as major indexes look poised to rebound.
