I try not to do this (being far from per­fect), but have a read of the fol­low­ing story which asks, by way of report­ing, Baby joy for Kap­l­in­sky – but are Five chiefs happy?

Nata­sha Kap­l­in­sky, who six weeks ago became the face of Five News on an annual salary of £1 mil­lion, mak­ing her the richest news presenter in Bri­tain, is three months preg­nant, the sta­tion con­firmed yesterday.

While Ms Kap­l­in­sky, 35, was said by friends to be “ecstatic” about her latest good news, it is not known how senior man­age­ment feel at the pro­spect of los­ing their high-profile sign­ing to mater­nity leave.

Yes­ter­day, the sta­tion insisted it shared in its new employee’s good for­tune. Chris Shaw, senior con­trol­ler, said, through teeth that may or may not have been grit­ted: “Nata­sha has had a tre­mend­ous impact and we’re delighted to hear the fant­astic news about her pregnancy.”

As one com­menter writes:

So, let me get this story right. Nata­sha is preg­nant, she is ecstatic and her employ­ers have said they are very happy for her. The writer then goes on to say “we don’t know” if this was said through grit­ted teeth…

Read­ers. They’re not as dumb as you think.

My old dead tree ver­sion of the Atlantic finally arrived, and with it a lovely, insight­ful piece on Katie Couric and the CBS Even­ing News by Caitlin Flanagan.

As the new Kap­l­in­sky Five News pre­pares to take to the air, and the revived News at Ten struggles, here is Flanagan’s con­clu­sion on Couric:

That Katie has bombed at CBS is a test­a­ment, not to the exist­ence of a glass ceil­ing, but to the fact that real revolu­tions are so thor­oughgo­ing that they don’t just provide a new answer, they change the very ques­tions being asked.

Katie’s man­date to lure women and young people to the nightly news was in itself ridicu­lous and doomed to fail — and a goal beneath her tal­ent and ambi­tions. No woman needs to storm the Bastille of nightly news, because the form has become irrel­ev­ant: Oprah has immeas­ur­ably more cul­tural, com­mer­cial, and polit­ical clout than Charles Gib­son and Brian Wil­li­ams, and no young per­son is ever going to make appoint­ment TV out of a sober-minded 6:30 wrap-up of stor­ies he or she already read online in the afternoon.

Because Katie remembered the old world, the one in which the most-respected news was broad­cast at the end of the day, she thought that she was tak­ing a more power­ful job. But the Today show—broadcast for four hours a day, a forum for inter­views with many of the top news­makers of the day, as well as for the kind of lifestyle-trend stor­ies it pion­eered and that have come to play such a big part in the nightly news—is a far more cul­tur­ally sig­ni­fic­ant program.

But you should read the whole thing.