Couric's 'Most Powerful' People in Media: All Except Two from the Bay Area
By E.B. Boyd on Nov 12, 2009 02:08 PM
We'd always thought New York was ground zero for media power-brokering, but if Katie Couric's list of the most powerful people in media is any indicator, the center has shifted to the new media whizzes in the Bay Area.
The CBS Evening News anchor prepared her list as part of Forbes' special report on "The World's Most Powerful People." So when she put pen to paper, who did she choose? Rupert Murdoch? Bill Keller? Anderson Cooper?
Nope. She pegs your humble servants laboring away in the trenches of Silicon Valley:
Google co-founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page: "It's the Kleenex of search engines," Couric writes, "and the jewel in its crown is YouTube, where channels like mine coexist with babies dancing to Beyoncé."
BlogHer co-founders Jory Des Jardins, Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone: "Thirty-six million women read or write a blog every week, and women spend about $2 trillion a year.... Teaching women about technology... helps harness a growing and influential demographic in an ever more pervasive medium."
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark: "About 30 employees and a design as iconic and simplistic as the Google front door is all it took to pose a serious threat to the survival of newspaper ads."
Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams: "Twitter is rapidly evolving into a 21st-century news feed, a go-to spot every time a major news story breaks."
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg: "Facebook has become a highly useful tool for networking and promotion and added some very smart applications that make it an easy place to both work and play."
"Among the many millions of sites and the svengalis behind them, there are a few classics that stand out, and if used correctly can become excellent tools that work well with traditional media," Couric writes. "Maybe even make the media stronger."
