News Mix: Viewers Still Like Katie Couric; Overdue Honor for Sportswriter Mary Garber; Oxygen to End "Talk Sex"; Mother's Day and the Empty Nest; Embracing "Slow Medicine"

Viewers Still Like Couric: "Viewers aren't pushing for Katie Couric to leave the CBS anchor chair, but if she did, they would like to see her back on her former turf — a morning news show such as NBC's Today, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll," reports USA Today.

CBS had hoped Couric, a newswoman with a strong following in the morning hours, would bring new viewers, including more women and younger people, to a shrinking evening-news audience. But that has not happened, says Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. [...]

Couric's groundbreaking status as the first sole female anchor of a network evening newscast may have worked against her, respondents say: 18% think public reluctance to accept a woman as anchor is a major reason for her lower ratings, while another 36% say it is a minor reason. However, 42% felt gender was not a factor.

"I think the older segment of the population is a little more comfortable with Charles Gibson and with Brian Williams, because they do fit the more traditional mold of what an evening newscast is expected to be," says Fordham University journalism professor Paul Levinson.

Plus: CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien tells students Couric is being treated "unfairly and badly" by the media.

An Overdue Honor for a Pioneer Sportswriter: New York Times sportswriter George Vecsey has written a tribute to Mary Garber, who on Monday was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, "as a pioneer among female sportswriters, among all of us."

Ever since I first heard of Mary Garber, I have thought of her as a symbol of deprivation, humbly standing outside locker rooms around Winston-Salem, N.C., waiting for the boys to come out to deliver a few belated quotes to her. How simplistic.

"Any time I would fly into town to visit my aunt," said Jonathan Brown, her nephew from California, "we would go out to a mall or a restaurant, and some older man, black or white, would pull out his wallet and show us an old clipping and say, 'Miss Mary wrote this about me.'"

In her nursing home, just turned 92, Garber occasionally receives visitors from the Sportsmen’s Club, generations of black athletes from around Winston-Salem, men who remember the tiny white woman with the knitted cap pulled over her head on chilly football sidelines, who wrote them up, fairly, lovingly.

This is the paragon being honored Monday, not merely some victim of another brand of segregation. She was an entitled person who just happened to like cramming into a gym on Friday night to watch boys play basketball.

"She was a smart lady who worked," said Roseann Rush, a retired advertising executive who visits Miss Mary every afternoon from 3 to 6. "She did what she wanted to do."

Plus: Listen to interviews with Garber archived at the Washington Press Club Foundation as part of its oral history project on women in journalism.

Sue Johanson to Stop Talking About Sex - at Least at Midnight: "Oxygen's 'Talk Sex' call-in show with colorful septugenarian educator Sue Johanson is ending its run after six seasons, the network announced Tuesday," reports the Associated Press.

"I'm going to miss it terribly," Johanson (left) told the AP. "It's been part of my life and I just love it. I'm going to miss writing scripts. I'm going to miss having to read books. I'm going to miss playing with sex toys."

The final show, which airs at midnight Sunday, May 11, will include a countdown of the year's top 10 sex toys. Johanson, 77, said she will continue to give lectures. "I'm a ham," she said. "I love a large audience."

Plus: The CW network plans to target older women viewers with more original programming in daytime, according to MediaPost.

Mother's Day and the Empty Nest: From Women's eNews: Mother's Day marks a time for some women to reflect on years past and what lies ahead once the kids are gone. After 30 years with children, Peggy Drexler, an assistant professor of psychology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, is preparing to contemplate a loss that's ahead of her and how to embrace her empty nest.

Being Heard About Life's End: The New York Times reports on the philosophy of "slow medicine," which is considered a growing alternative to aggressive and costly end-of-life care. Jane Gross writes:

Grounded in research at the Dartmouth Medical School, slow medicine encourages physicians to put on the brakes when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly, and it educates patients and families how to push back against emergency room trips and hospitalizations designed for those with treatable illnesses, not the inevitable erosion of advanced age.

Slow medicine, which shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure, is increasingly available in nursing homes, but for those living at home or in assisted living, a medical scare usually prompts a call to 911, with little opportunity to choose otherwise.

The story also links to two poems by Carol Armstrong about growing older.