Russ Mitchell Filling In By Day & Night

“Russ Mitchell has been the hardest working man on TV this week with fill-ins on the Early Show and Evening News,” an e-mailer says.

Mitchell is usually the Early Show’s news anchor, but he subbed for Harry Smith this week. But that’s not all: he’s been filling in for Katie Couric all week, too. “There’s going to be a ham in my paycheck this week,” he joked this morning.

He had an interesting start to the week. On Monday, “I began the day interviewing Michael O’Hanlon from the Brookings Institution on the British-Iranian crisis. An hour or so later, I was interviewing the new Maytag repairman. Then, I interviewed Beyonce with 1,000 screaming fans watching (I think they were there for her — not me) and then I raced across town to prepare to anchor the CBS Evening News,” he told the network’s C-Note. “It was a day that was all over the map, which is what made it so…interesting.”