This morning’s announcement caps a “veiled but intense image-management campaign on Ms. Couric’s behalf,” the Observer’s Rebecca Dana reveals.

“There was the briefing book that Ms. Couric’s personal spokesman, Matthew Hiltzik, had been passing around recently. The 15-page document laid out Ms. Couric’s qualifications to be a news anchor, for the benefit of reporters who would eventually write about Ms. Couric becoming the Evening News anchor. It included a graph, a table and copious bullet-pointed citations of previous media reports on Ms. Couric’s achievements.”

This week, “the fruits of the public-relations campaign were on display,” Dana says. She cites this paragraph in Howard Kurtz‘s Tuesday piece: “After a 15-year run at Today in which Couric has interviewed everyone from President Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell to Bill Gates, Donald Trump and O.J. Simpson, her hard-news background is hardly in doubt.”

“All six of those names appear in the briefing book, on a list of Ms. Couric’s major interviews, broken down by category.” It’s a must-read…