Katie Couric

Whether she’s doing the entertainment variety of TV, like the morning show which she did for so long and so well to the evening news gig she’s doing now, Couric is a polished pro. However, we can learn something important from what Couric did when she delivered the Commencement speech at a Midwest university. She had a written script. That’s fine. Thank heavens she didn’t memorize it, But, she read it. Reading to an audience is bad news. It’s every audience’s biggest pet peeve. The ideal way to deliver from a script is to rehearse it, mark it and then refer to it making sure you connect with your audience with more eye contact than eyes down at script level. People want to be looked at. They want to be acknowledged. They want you to talk to them. Not read to them.