Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009

Subject: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 08:57 PM

from McClatchy:

Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite dies at 92
link

He led us to Saigon, to Jonestown, to Selma, to Attica.

He escorted us to all corners of the Earth, then he showed us to the moon.

As anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," Walter Cronkite — who died Friday at age 92 after a period of failing health, family members said — not only narrated a tumultuous era in American life, but presided over the instant that television achieved its thunderbolt potential to be the most powerful communication tool in history.

That defining moment unfolded Nov. 22, 1963, after Cronkite was drawn to the urgent, five-bell summons of the United Press International ticker in the CBS newsroom: Shots had been fired at the motorcade of President John F. Kennedy.

It would take 20 minutes for a camera to be warmed up to broadcast his image, so Cronkite interrupted "As the World Turns" and reported the news over a screen slide that said "Bulletin."

An hour later, on the air in his shirt sleeves, Cronkite was handed a sheet of paper. He paused, swallowed, removed his glasses and looked into the camera.

Tense viewers could already surmise what was coming next, and it came in a grim, quavering voice:

"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time."

For the next four days, he led a mourning nation through wrenching grief. For anyone alive in that time, the TV images of the Kennedy funeral procession, the salute of little John-John to his dead father and the jailhouse execution of Lee Harvey Oswald are indelibly stored in memory.

Television's speed, reach and impact had come of age, and Cronkite's Midwestern timbre would provide the soundtrack for the medium's most incandescent years.

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born November 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., son of a dentist. His family lived in Kansas City and moved to Houston when he was 10.

By age 13, he had settled on journalism as his career. He wrote community news items for the Houston Post while in high school and dropped out of the University of Texas in Austin during his junior year for a newspaper job.

He went on to a variety of radio news positions in the Midwest, then joined the United Press in Kansas City in 1937. He liked the deadline-every-minute pace of wire service work and rose to be one of the top correspondents of World War II.

He flew on bombing raids in a B-17 Flying Fortress, landed in a glider in the Netherlands after the D-Day assault and wrote from the Battle of the Bulge. In a bomber on D-Day, he flew over the vast allied armada, later remarking he didn't think there was room in the sea for one more vessel. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials before being posted as UP's Moscow correspondent.

In 1950, he joined CBS and tackled a variety of assignments, including "You Are There," which re-enacted historical moments with actors, and "The Twentieth Century," a documentary series.

In April 1962, he replaced Douglas Edwards as anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," a position he would hold for 19 years, through the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Only once did he lose his temper on the air, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. While Chicago police battled anti-war protesters outside, a security officer punched reporter Dan Rather to the convention floor.

As the confrontation went live on CBS, Cronkite growled, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

But it was the space program in the 1960s and '70s that held special excitement for Cronkite. He became a regular at Cape Canaveral as the nation stretched for the heavens.

He explained rocketry in precise but simple terms. He noted in his 1996 autobiography, "A Reporter's Life," that it was an unusual role for a man who flunked first-year physics at the University of Texas.

"If my professor had heard me explaining orbital mechanics to an audience of trusting millions, I'm afraid he would have spun in his grave."

When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969, with less than 30 seconds of fuel reserve, Cronkite was uncharacteristically speechless.

"Man on the moon," he declared, then stammered for the next two minutes as he listened to the cross-chat between Houston and the Sea of Tranquility. "Oh, jeez . . . Oh, boy . . . Whew . . . Boy . . . Oh, boy."

A measure of his influence became evident 1968, when he returned from a reporting tour of Vietnam convinced the war was unwinnable. He talked it over with CBS News President Richard Salant, who suggested Cronkite do a commentary at the end of a Vietnam special report.

Cronkite was uncertain whether he should let his opinion into a news program. But Salant said, "You know, the person they believe is you; why don't you go and tell them the truth?"

Cronkite decided to do it, and was prepared for the consequences. "If the people felt that that debased the currency to the degree I ought to leave the 'Evening News,' I'd do it," he said in a 1981 interview.

Cronkite, by then firmly in first place in the evening-news race and often called "the most trusted man in America," told viewers it was time to end the war.

"It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a stalemate."

President Lyndon Johnson watched the broadcast, and is said to have remarked: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Cronkite loved to sail, and his custom-built ketch Wyntje, named for a Dutch ancestor, was often seen in coastal Carolinas villages in summers and fall.

In 1982, he and his wife, Betsy, got caught in a fierce nor'easter, and put in to Elizabeth City to ride it out. As 80 mph gusts raked the coast, they became celebrities of the storm. Autograph seekers greeted him whenever he poked out of the vessel.

Doug Mayes, longtime WBTV (Channel 3) anchor, said Cronkite came to Charlotte soon after taking over the "CBS Evening News." He was surprised that Cronkite not only knew who he was, but was keen on WBTV's 6 p.m. news-ratings lead, which was No. 1 among all CBS affiliates in the '60s.

"He said, 'I know who you are, and I want to thank you for what you do for me and what you give me each night at 6:30,'" recalled Mayes, 87.

"Cronkite was smart. He'd done his homework. I'd also met Douglas Edwards once. He didn't seem to know what the station was, or even cared."

In the 1980s, CBS had a rule that everyone retired by 65. This allowed management to uproot the aging Cronkite in place of the up-and-coming Rather, who was expected to woo a younger audience.

Rival ABC wanted Rather for their evening news. CBS didn't want that to happen. Cronkite was cut loose from the anchor desk in March 1981 with the promise he would do other shows, but his subsequent work with the network amounted to little.

Cronkite played nice at the time, but had been stung by the succession. Rather subsequently rode the newscast into third place.

Cronkite's spite eventually showed after Rather left CBS in disgrace in 2005 — at age 73, the retirement policy having faded away — after a botched "60 Minutes Wednesday" piece about President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard.

Bob Schieffer, not Rather, should have replaced him on the news, Cronkite told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview.

When asked why, Cronkite delivered a pent-up blow: "It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long."

And Cronkite got in one final lick. When Katie Couric took over as anchor in 2006, it was his voice that introduced the newscast.

After retirement, Cronkite was a pointed critic of television news, particularly a trend toward superficiality on local broadcasts.

"It seems to me as I travel about the country, that all it takes today to be an anchorperson is to be under 25, fair of face and figure, dulcet of tone, and well coiffed. And that is just for the men," he cracked in 1981.

He also had complaints about network news being only 30 minutes long. "We must compress to near the point of unintelligibility," he said.

Cronkite closed each newscast with "And that's the way it is," followed by the date.

Little-known fact: Though it became his signature, it never was meant as a standard sign-off. When Cronkite took over the newscast in 1962, he wanted to find an irony-of-fate story to finish the broadcast each night, and that line was written to follow it.

Though he started his career in an era of typewriters and radios, Cronkite advocated technological advancement, particularly in news delivery. In his autobiography, he forecast a future of revolutionary possibilities driven by a digital age.

"I expect to watch all of this from a perch yet to be determined," he added. "I just hope that wherever that is, folks will still stop me, as they do today, and ask: 'Didn't you used to be Walter Cronkite?'"

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:06 PM

Another giant no longer walks this earth.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:13 PM

Wow. I come home a bit early from The Press Room and this is what I find.

Talk about an era being over. I grew up (early teens) with him on the news and I just turned 60. After Murrow, he's the personification of "News".

I'd noticed I hadn't seen him and his wife on the streets of Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a few years -- he liked the seacoast city and often visited.

He is missed.

Linn

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:23 PM

There are so very many who are no longer with us...at least wherever he is the news is being well done.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:31 PM

I missed him as soon as he retired from broadcasting! If only we had more like him now reporting the news.
R.I.P. uncle Walter

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:40 PM

A bit of extra sadness...his death comes almost on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He truly loved the space program and the people in it. When I think of watching TV that night, I think more of Walter Cronkite almost in tears than I do of Armstrong's step for man.   I'm sure he was looking forward to this anniversary.

He was the voice and the presence that represented what was good in us and also where we went wrong. I'm 60 years old and almost every event of any significance as I grew up is marked well with the imprint of this great man....... and once again he has brought me to tears tonight. The world is not now, nor will it ever be, quite the same, but it was made far better by Walter Cronkite.

Now he's gone........and that's the way it is...........


Pat

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, weeps for us all
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 09:45 PM

He told me of the moon landing.
He told me of the war
He told me while halfway laughing
of great things we had in store.

Ladies and Gentlemen the President has been shot.
Walter Chronkite said through the glass.
Later he announced the President is dead,
and he wept. He wept for us.

Last night I had a dream I barely remember
like dark glass that keep the dreams and words apart.
But I saw Walter Chronkite weeping,

I saw fearful young faces
stare at the darkness.
The rapturous faithful feeling vindicated
and the rest yelling I told you so.

When times got tough,
the tough got going
and crawled in a hole.
The poor said goodbye to their homes
while the rich ate foul hand to mouth.

Silence split by maniacal laughter
when another scarce scrap is found and eaten.
For the dead there are no memories
there are no regrets.
because of people who were there like Walter
not everyone forgets.

But from that dream what I remember most of all
was Walter Chronkite weeping.
He weeps for us all.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 10:04 PM

He exited center stage when Ronald Reagan made the scene.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: GUEST,WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 10:06 PM

He never "wept". He was filled with emotion, but he was always the DEFINITION of "journalist".

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 10:20 PM

What a passage; what an icon. He was the voice of the moon rockets and the voice of the Kennedy tragedy and so many other things.

I am greatly saddened--I feel as if the last Real Journalists had vanished. I am sure this is not true, but that's how it feels.


A

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 10:38 PM

It's damn near true, imo, Amos. There are none like him; haven't been for a long time and his assessment of local news is spot on.

Spaw, couldn't have said it better.

Donuel, well done, esp. the first parts.

I know life keeps evolving, but it seems so much of what was important to us is now gone. Cronkite was a major figure for all of the important benchmarks of our recent history. It is really sad that he is no longer.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, 7-2009
From: EBarnacle
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 10:46 PM

I met him at the NY Boat Show several times over the past few years. Although he always had an assistant with a wheelchair with him, he spent as little time as he could manage in it. It interfered with his ability to be with people as a person rather than as a wreck.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 04:42 AM

I just learned tonight that when Walter Cronkite retired at age 65, it was not by choice. The head of CBS insisted that he do so - company policy. Cronkite wanted to keep going, and what a crying shame he was not allowed to do so. A great injustice both to him and to the rest of the nation, in the name of arbitrary ageism.

We haven't really seen the likes of a journalist like Cronkite in decades, and I fear we may never again. Now it's all about infotainment, ratings, and having pretty faces delivering the alternatively sanitized and sensationalized 'news'.

Over the past couple of decades I kept hoping maybe Walter Cronkite would come out of retirement. I surely wish he had.

Yours was a special life, Walter. And that's the way it is.

Genie

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 08:19 AM

Look at the bright side, Genie. You got Dan Blather!

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 08:42 AM

Even as a 60's anti-war radical, I trusted him to be telling the truth... Since his retirement I take the rest of them with a grain of salt... But Walter wouldn't lie to ya'...

RIP...

B~

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: number 6
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 09:40 AM

After Walter Cronkite delivered his message concerning the Tet Offensive, public opinion regarding the war changed .... now most Americans realized it was a futile attmept. So much so that President Johnson told his advisors "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Walter Cronkite ... the most trusted man in America.

A sad loss.

biLL

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 09:59 AM

He really was trusted, and sadly, I can't think of any journalist who is trusted now. Everybody seems to have an axe to grind.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 10:16 AM

Rig-

So true!

Of course I prefer some axes to others.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 10:31 AM

I never got up enough nerve to go up to him and say "hi" when I saw him on the streets of Portsmouth. Really wish I had -- I'm sure he would have been gracious.

Linn

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: gnu
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 11:16 AM

A true class act. RIP.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 11:40 AM

There was always something reassuring about Cronkite's presentation of the news, and I think that was the key to his success. As bad as the news could be, he gave the impression that he was completely on the level, and also that he cared. It must have been some intonation in his voice or some weary kindness in his aspect, because I never recall him slanting the information to reflect his point of view. Although he has been mainly out of the public eye for the last 20 years, I was sometimes pleasantly surprised to hear him narrating a program, and found the voice steady, unchanged.
His death affects me on some level that few celebrity deaths can. I feel that I knew him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 12:22 PM

The networks don't DO news any longer, folks, and haven't for some time- no matter who the presenter is.

Its all "entertainment" now, aimed at A.D.D. afflicted morons.


Turn off your TV baby, that ain't the news
You've got to use your mind
In these hard times

   -Patrick Fitzsimmons

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: EBarnacle
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 02:16 PM

Basically, he defined the difference between newsman and newscaster/newsreader.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 03:34 PM

I grew up with the guy's voice and face, but really this lionization of Walter Cronkite is ridiculous. More boomer crap. He stood up to the powers that be once in his life. Once. Can anyone give me an example of some other hard-hitting investigative reporting he did? -- it may be that he did some while working for UPI as a youngster, but I can't think of any. He was just a personality, giving warm support to an era that is thankfully dead, when daddy told us on TV what the world was like. That world is gone, and I am so grateful: it was a world that deserved to go. He seems to have been a nice guy, that's really about it.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 05:17 PM

"...an example of some other hard-hitting investigative reporting he did?"

Peter...he wasn't trying to be an 'investigative' reporter. He was a war correspondent and a 'basic' reporter. He was in Europe in WWII and in Viet Nam...etc... he could easily have been a statistic. THAT needed doing as much as investigative stuff needed doing. It's a different mindset.

He prided himself on NOT interjecting his own opinion into most stories so he could report with impartiality.

He set a standard for honesty.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: goatfell
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 05:19 PM

so sad

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 06:39 PM

I am with Bill on this one, PT. No one has enough information to be completely objective, including you and me. I think Cronkite on assignment and Cronkite at the news desk did his best at objective reporting. I don't think he was selling an agenda beyond what he believed, himself, to be true. Are our priorities different today than they were in 1965? Yes. Has our perspective changed on what the facts of the day were in 1965? Yes. We benefit from that viewpoint today, but it is wrong to condemn Cronkite for not achieving that perspective 40 years ago. The fact that he provided a calm voice in a turbulent era of rapid change will endear him forever to many of those who also experienced it.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 07:09 PM

Where's the week-long hoorah for Mr. Cronkite? Where is the twenty page newspaper insert (ala L.A. Times) chronicling his long, important career? Jesus! The priorities of the media and the polity is all f'd up. Does the younger demographic, say under 35, even know who he was?

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 07:54 PM

They knew who Michael Jackson was. How long did we have to put up...

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 08:08 PM

The Washington Post today had several articles about him...a couple quite long and detailed.

One colleague told the story (on TV) about Cronkite in later years, complaining about the nightly 'news' half-hour offering a promo about some little 'piece' for the next evening.
"They only have 22 minutes for the show...how do they know what the news will be tomorrow?", he asked with frustration.
He simply believed the time should be reserved for reporting accurately as much of genuine current news as possible.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 08:56 PM

He made the great mistake no good reporter would make: he hung around the rich and the famous too long.   

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 10:39 PM

*sigh* gotta put that in perspectibe also......Another of his friends mentioned that he got to feeling awkward once HE became so popular. Often, when he'd show up at some event to monitor a newsworthy issue, other reporters and the public would flock around him and detract from the person or event that was featured. He didn't LIKE "being the news".

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Genie
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 11:33 PM

Yes, Bill,
That's why Cronkite, when told he was "the most trusted man in America" and urged to run for political office, basically said that would be counter to what he was about -- which was the news, not him and his views or celebrity.

Sadly ironic that today our news brodcasts are longer and more ubiquitous than when Cronkite started, yet they bring less and less information (especially about important topics) than ever before.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 18 Jul 09 - 11:36 PM

"He made the great mistake no good reporter would make: he hung around the rich and the famous too long."

What?!!!!!

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: Peter T.
Date: 19 Jul 09 - 05:10 AM

Thomas Jefferson best stated the Framers' views on a free press when he declared: "The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter" ( Jefferson, Writings, 1984, 880 ). Indicative of the importance the Framers placed on freedom of the press was the eventual adoption in 1791 of the First Amendment that guaranteed its constitutional protection. According to Thomas Jefferson: "Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions" ( Jefferson 1984, 1147 ). [excerpt from D. Schulz, "It's Show Time".

The investigation of their actions. Public criticism and debate. That is what journalism is, not being the warm fatherly face of the powers that be.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: robomatic
Date: 19 Jul 09 - 08:14 PM

I have no word to say against him except that he wasn't the only able anchor of his time. In my family we watched Eric Sevareid and Howard K Smith, fine men who deserve similar accolades to Walter Cronkite. I find Bob Schieffer to be rather similar in manner to Walter Cronkite. He is still on on Sundays.

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: bankley
Date: 20 Jul 09 - 10:30 AM

I loved his voice...and style

Subject: RE: Obit: Walter Cronkite, newsman, July 2009
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Jul 09 - 11:19 AM

Oh, you mean like Bill Moyers on PBS, Peter.