News shake-up at CBS

Two reports released in the past two days seem to signal major changes in the works at CBS News.

The first, reported by the New York Times news service, says that CBS is in "intense" negotiations with CNN to marry the two company's news gathering operations.

The second, published variously in the New York papers, says Katie Couric's days (due to lousy ratings) at CBS are numbered and she could be out of the anchor position by the time we have a new president.

The story does say that the report may have been planted to give Couric either better leverage in contract negotiations or to smoothly transition her out of the anchor chair to a regular stint on 60 Minutes.

Apparently the former home of news pantheon members Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow seem to moving in a direction other networks aren't. They seem to be realizing that a personality-driven half-hour evening newscast is simply a relic of another era - people don't really lend it much credence.

Also they are willing, as many websites and blogs do, to move toward expansion of content rather than expansion of coverage. Meaning, just as we hyper-link to other stories to give our readers more context and follow-up, a CBS/CNN deal may be a similar concept.