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).
November's jobs report is tricky: nonfarm payrolls only increased by 210,000, following an October gain of 546,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% - and the labor force participation rate rose 61.8% to its highest level since March 2020. Also of note: the retail sector saw a decline of 20,000 jobs despite what was once a traditional late fall push to hire before the holiday sales rush. What's going on in the labor market, and can we expect more volatile numbers as the omicron variant spreads during the winter months? Adam Ozimek, Chief economist at Upwork, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the mixed jobs report, sector winners and losers, retail's flip-flop, and more.
Chinese regulators are reportedly behind China-based ride-hailing company DiDi exiting from the New York Stock Exchange, just days after listing earlier this year. The regulators stated prior that DiDi had not received the necessary clearances to list in the states. Gordon Chang, Asian affairs expert, joined Cheddar to break down what the delisting says about the relationship between nations. "This really strikes me as an attempt to really to force a decoupling of China and the U.S. in the financial markets," Chang said.
Hologram communication platform maker PORTL is looking to take communication to the next level. Founder and CEO David Nussbaum joined Cheddar to talk about the company's recent $12 million Series A funding round that will be used to bring the concept of holoportation to market. Nussbaum noted his hologram technology is just not comparable to augmented reality or virtual metaverses because the image projection is happening in real-time and in actual reality. "Well, unlike VR or AR, we're 'R.' We're real. You don't need a headset. You don't need wearables. You don't need to download anything. It's incredible," he said.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stopped by Cheddar's "Between Bells" to talk about his Birth of Wikipedia auction at Christie's putting two items linked to the origins of Wikipedia up for sale. On the auction block are his original strawberry iMac that was used to create the long-running online encyclopedia and what Wales described as an interactive NFT of his first Wikipedia edit rather than a static image. "Once it's been sold, the owner can turn it on, and anyone can edit the page and it will be reflected in the NFT," he said.
On this episode of Your Future Home, Carmine Satabella, Interior Designer & Television Host, joins to break down how to get the most out of your winter decor this year and basic kitchen fundamentals that go a long way; Max Child, CEO and co-founder of Volley, discusses the rise of voice games and how tech is continuing to change smart homes; Cheddar breaks down everything you need to know about how to start flipping homes.
China-based DiDi is delisting from the New York Stock Exchange after Chinese officials reportedly asked the ride-hailing company to do so. It will instead list on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.
U.S. Futures were pointing to a higher open to round out the week despite a miss on the November Jobs Report, which showed slower job growth than expected-- and as the omicron variant continues to spread across the country. Patrick Healey, Founder & President at Caliber Financial Partners joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
It's a mixed bag for the November jobs report. Hiring slowed last month as employers only added 210,000 jobs, massively missing the estimate of 550,000. But there was one bright spot: the unemployment rate fell to 4.2%, with the number of unemployed people dropping to 6.9 million. Both of those numbers are considerably down from their highs at the end of the 2020 recession. Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden's Council of Economic Advisers, joined Cheddar to discuss the report and the state of the country's ongoing economic recovery.
