Katie's Coming

Katie Couric's coming to town July 11 as part of a six-city exploratory mission, and yer welcome to come meet the former Today show co-host who, on September 5, takes over as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Lori Conrad, director of communications at KTVT-Channel 11, just shot us the note that Couric's got a full day planned, including two fundraisers for the American Cancer Society (breakfast in Fort Worth, lunch in Dallas) that are open to the public, but she will spend the afternoon at an informal town meeting with folks from the community, which, last time I looked, included you. Now, it's less a meeting, really, than a sit-down to find out what kind of pieces Regular Folk wanna see on TV; please, by all means, feel free to tell her you want...whatcallit...hard news. That, or more cooking segments. One or the other's bound to make a dent. But Conrad just told Unfair Park this thing's for Couric's ears only: KTVT isn't even allowed to film it, and no media's allowed inside the meet-and-greet, though some of us will be attending the breakfast or lunch (where, alas, no one-on-one interviews will be allowed, either, suggesting the journalist doesn't like other journalists being, uh, journalists, but whatev). If you want to attend the research-and-development git-together with Katie, all you have to do is go to Channel 11's Web site and fill out the questionnaire, which, oddly, contains the question, "Where in the world is Matt Lauer?" --Robert Wilonsky