In a Vanity Fair profile of Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, star hire Katie Couric describes her small team as “the little engine that could…working hard every day to deliver strong content.”
But a former Yahoo executive–not named in the story–says much of Couric’s work is lost in the giant algorithm-driven content machine that is Yahoo. “The Katie deal is in very bad shape,” the former staffer is quoted as saying. “She is succeeding despite Yahoo.”
The story, though, notes that much of Couric’s reporting as Yahoo’s global news anchor has created buzz and traffic–300 million page views for her interviews and 15 million streams for presidential profiles. She has also launched a live streaming newscast. Still, it’s a small audience compared to the overall reach of Yahoo’s homepage, but an audience that Couric has reached without much lift from that homepage, either.
“We have an incredible, smart, nimble, and multi-talented team, capable of producing phenomenal news features and iterative content in many different forms for a variety of platforms,” Couric told the magazine.