Keith J. Kelly

Keith J. Kelly

Media

Pressure on Katie Couric to deliver for Yahoo amid cutbacks

Yahoo’s round of cutbacks this week is putting renewed pressure on Katie Couric, the global news anchor who is pulling in $10 million a year.

There was grumbling in the ranks recently, several sources said, as Yahoo axed popular magazine verticals and laid off workers while retaining the high-priced anchor.

For many observers, it was a case of déjà vu. Couric, these people noted, pulled in $15 million a year as the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” — while the Tiffany Network was slashing jobs on its news desk.

Some said that while Couric is good at carrying the flag, she has failed to pull in the big celebrity “gets” that she was hired to do when in 2013 she was hired as Yahoo’s first-ever global news anchor.

“Couric was always a status handbag [buy] for [CEO] Marisa [Mayer] and Kathy Savitt,” said one ex-Yahoo insider.

Savitt, the ex-chief marketing officer and head of global media, left in September to join STX Entertainment.

Even among the disposed, however, there were some who refused to blame Couric.

“She did the best with what she had,” said one.

Yahoo Editor-in-chief Martha Nelson — who only joined Yahoo in August — swung the ax on Wednesday and chopped underperforming verticals in a number of areas, including food, health, parenting, travel, autos and real estate.

Yahoo Style Editor-in-chief and Executive Creative Officer Joe Zee was retained as part of a newly formed lifestyle group that will join news, finance and sports as the sole surviving verticals. Yahoo Style will continue under the lifestyle banner.

Nelson gave a vote of confidence to Couric on Thursday, saying most of the major Presidential candidates have sat for interviews with Couric — even if the No. 1 prize in the Presidential interview series, Donald Trump, has not.

In her days at CBS, Couric did several interviews with Sarah Palin in 2008 that were widely seen as a disaster for the Republican vice presidential candidate and helped derail the campaign.

“Katie Couric brings a unique expertise and audience to Yahoo,” insisted Nelson. “Newsmakers want to talk to Katie. She’s interviewed almost every major presidential candidate in the race, and her video streams have more than doubled in the last year. I expect that trajectory to continue.”