NEWS KATIE CAN USE Couric (Photo: Getty Images)

This week Katie Couric faced her failing ratings in a New York magazine profile , an act that many at CBS view as her first step towards exiting the network. Along the way she took some potshots—at Page Six, sure, but more importantly, at her own former Today show audience. Reporting on fashion, celebrities, and other frothy material she says, "wasn't the whole enchilada."

Now, Couric seems caught in a murky grey area; unable to woo hard news viewers but denying the peppy housewife contingency that made her so popular.

So this week, we spoke to two Manhattan celebrity publicists, big guns, really, who asked to remain nameless, given their close ties to the news media. Both of them had some strong words for Katie but feel that the New York article is the least of her problems at the moment.

Katie Couric, you're in the PR/ER!

Don't abandon your core fanbase
Publicist 1: "Cardinal rule number one is don't blame your audience. She was basically saying people are stupid."
Publicist 2: "She needs to court key demos in order to grow. If she needs mothers between 25 and 50, she should be doing a story with Oprah, not New York magazine."

Forget about the article, work on building ratings
Pub. 2: "Ultimately, the article is an inside problem, because it is not that widely read. What she needs to focus on are the basic external problems of growing a viewership and changing the newscast. From a PR perspective, if she can do that, then the questions about whose fault this was, or if it matters that she is a woman, all these navel-gazing questions, become moot."

Try to stay away from confessional interviews for a while
Pub. 2: "She also has always exhibited a level of candor that some other folks have not—she got a colonoscopy on national TV. But she can deviate on tangents, and the moment you go off message is the moment a reporter is going to pick up on and run with."