Rebecca Nappi: Here’s wishing Katie success in the big chair

In Sunday’s newspaper, a political cartoon depicted broadcasting legend Edward R. Murrow reading the news that Katie “Perky” Couric was named the new solo anchor for the CBS Evening News. Murrow says, “Good night, and good grief,” a variation on the classic sign off from his 1950s broadcasts.

The Couric announcement was a milestone in women’s history, because female anchors on the three network evening news shows have always been paired with men.

It’s 2006, more than 30 years since the women’s movement began in earnest, and still a “cultural first” woman is subjected to snide and sexist attacks, by both men and women.

Couric’s been a target for a week now.

I’ve never been a huge Couric fan because she breaks a Journalism 101 rule by answering her own questions while asking them.

But I’m rooting for her to succeed.

Women have sat in those big-three anchor chairs before, but not for long, and always with men. (ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas is solo for now because her co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, was injured in Iraq.) That duo-anchor arrangement always makes me think of “The Thing with Two Heads,” a 1972 sci-fi film in which the heads of Rosey Grier and Ray Milland poke out from the same shared body. Weird.

Critics charge that Couric lacks gravitas because she’s been on a morning news show for 15 years, where she interviews presidents and prime ministers – and celebrities.

Yet Couric paid her dues as a young reporter in Washington, D.C., and Miami, two of the country’s toughest journalism markets. And her “Today” show interviews with world leaders count for something.

Couric’s life experience also adds gravitas to her resumé. Her husband died of colon cancer in 1998. A few years later, pancreatic cancer killed her sister. She grieved both by raising awareness of testing for early cancer detection.

Andy Rooney said that even though “everybody likes Katie Couric,” no one at CBS was pleased she was coming there. This from a man whose gravitas sometimes takes the form of showing “60 Minutes” viewers the contents of his desk.

In the early days of the women’s movement, language was used to keep women tethered to traditional places. Those striving to break free were called aggressive and bitchy.

The words used against Couric can be found in the latest editions of the put-down dictionary.

She is “nice” and “perky” and “likable.”

The journalism profession often reminds me of adult high school, where the rules of who is a cool journalist, and who is not, are as strict and irrational as the rules that guide popularity in real high school.

That’s why it’s an affront to some journalists that a perky woman, who cried when she announced her decision to leave NBC, will sit solo where no woman has sat solo before. And make a cool $15 million a year doing it.

Murrow’s expose of communist hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy placed Murrow in the history books. But he also did celebrity interviews on his “Person to Person” show, even though media critics lambasted him for it.

“Murrow steadfastly defended the series,” according to his biography on the Museum of Broadcast Communications Web site. “If two or three children committed themselves to piano lessons after seeing Van Cliburn, Murrow believed the criticism worth taking.”

Murrow was confident enough to do both serious and light journalism.

Couric shares that same confidence.

Women and men who become cultural “firsts” are not necessarily the best and brightest. But they adhere to an agenda driven mostly by the critic within. And therein lies their power.

Walter Cronkite was 45 when he assumed our country’s top storytelling position.

He held it steady there for 19 years. Couric is 49.

In this fragmented media age, when the future of network anchors is in doubt, no one predicts Couric will last half as long as Cronkite. But here’s one nice and perky hope that Couric, once again, surprises us all.