BS: Obit: Edwin Newman - Reporter - 9/13/10

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Edwin Newman - Reporter - 9/13/10
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Sep 10 - 05:58 PM

I loved his books on language...but I remember him first as a floor reporter at political conventions(back when 'things happened' at conventions), working his way thru the crowds.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Edwin Newman - Reporter - 9/13/10
From: gnu
Date: 17 Sep 10 - 05:55 PM

RIP... there are not many left who can speak their minds and not just sound bites and bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Edwin Newman - Reporter - 9/13/10
From: open mike
Date: 17 Sep 10 - 03:05 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Newman
He was a newscaster at the time President Kennedy was assasinated
and made many astute commentaries about that and other events of the time.

Subject: BS: Obit: Edwin Newman - Reporter - 9/13/10
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Sep 10 - 09:55 AM

From the New York Times:


Edwin Newman, the genteelly rumpled, genially grumpy NBC newsman who was equally famous as a stalwart defender of the honor of English, has died in Oxford, England. He was 91. He died of pneumonia on Aug. 13, but the announcement was delayed until Wednesday so that the family could spend time grieving privately, his lawyer, Rupert Mead, said. He said Mr. Newman and his wife had moved to England in 2007 to live closer to their daughter.

Mr. Newman, recognizable for his balding head and fierce dark eyebrows, was known to three decades of postwar television viewers for his erudition, droll wit and seemingly limitless penchant for puns. (There was, for example, the one about the man who blotted his wet shoes with newspapers, explaining, "These are The Times that dry men's soles.") He began his association with NBC in the early 1950s and was variously a correspondent, anchor and critic there before retiring in 1984.

An anchor on the "Today" show in the early 1960s and a familiar presence on the program for many years afterward, Mr. Newman also appeared regularly on "Meet the Press." He won seven New York Emmy Awards for his work in the 1960s and '70s with NBC's local affiliate, WNBC-TV, on which he was a drama critic and the host of the interview program "Speaking Freely."

He also moderated two presidential debates — the first Ford-Carter debate in 1976 and the second Reagan-Mondale debate in 1984 — and covered some of the signal events of the 20th century, from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Newman's best-known books, both published by Bobbs-Merrill, are "Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English?" (1974) and "A Civil Tongue" (1976). In them he declared what he called "a protective interest in the English language," which, he warned, was falling prey to windiness, witlessness, ungrammaticality, obfuscation and other depredations.