After a mostly-muted publicity campaign (we hear FNC Monday night) Katie: The Real Story hits store shelves Tuesday.
The Edward Klein unauthorized biography of Katie Couric was neither praised nor pilloried in reviews ranging from the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald to gossip sites Gawker and Jossip. Rather, the reader comes away a skeptic of Klein’s stories.
In a conversation Saturday, Couric’s personal publicist, Matthew Hiltzik told TVNewser, the book “has less buzz than the latest edition of Webster’s dictionary, and as much relevance as subtitles at a silent movie.”
His wit notwithstanding, the book veers into serious personal territory: Couric’s marriage, her husband’s death, her past relationships, and her ambitious ways.
In one episode, as described by the Daily News: “Klein claims that a young, single Couric destroyed the marriage of a top CNN executive because he promised to make her a star.”
A friend who has known Couric for 28 years, and who has knowledge of the romance tells TVNewser Couric did date a CNN employee. But he was not someone in a position to have advanced Couric’s career. A second source confirms he’d been divorced for a year, before he and Couric started dating.
Beyond the tawdry details, Klein seems to have gotten simple chronological facts wrong. He writes: Hiltzik, the publicist, was approached in the “early summer of 2006” by David Pecker.
A google search could have turned up a Sept. 21, 2005 Keith J. Kelly story in the NYPost, that would have proven Klein’s version of events to be about nine months late.
The Boston Herald’s review of Katie goes into great detail about Couric’s 4+ year relationship with Tom Werner, especially how Werner broke it off: by email. That, sources say, is indeed how it happened.
Hiltzik would not respond to specific details in the book, but had this to say about Klein’s prediction to TVNewser earlier this month that Couric was “freaking out about the book”: “Katie’s remained focused on what’s important, putting on an outstanding newscast.”
Hiltzik also tells us, Couric hasn’t read Katie, and has no plans to.