Success Quote by Katie Couric

Couric is performing a very particular kind of journalistic self-defense: the quiet refusal to turn reporting into a blood sport. The line is studded with softeners ("really", "too much", "I think"), but the message is hard. She’s pushing back on the newsroom temptation to make the work about "getting" someone - the rival anchor, the politician, the source, the scooping competitor. That verb matters. "Get" frames journalism as capture, not understanding; conquest, not clarity.

The subtext is as much about ego as ethics. A career in public-facing media invites scorekeeping: who landed the interview, who embarrassed the guest, who trended. Couric’s warning is that the chase corrodes craft. If your psychic energy is spent plotting someone else’s failure, you start writing and producing for the dunk, the gotcha clip, the headline that humiliates. The work becomes performative, optimized for applause and tribal gratification, not accuracy or insight.

There’s also a pragmatic read: "getting the other guy" narrows your vision. You miss complexity, you oversimplify motives, you force narratives into winners and losers. Couric is arguing for professionalism as a competitive advantage: quality comes from discipline, not vendetta. In an era when journalism is constantly accused of bias and agenda, she’s articulating an older, steadier posture - not neutrality as blandness, but focus as integrity. The sting of the quote is that it’s less a moral sermon than a productivity note: obsession is bad management, even of your own talent.