Eric on The Road

Journeys into the offbeat, off the beaten path, overlooked and forgotten - by Eric Model

Friday, July 17, 2009

Passing: Walter Cronkite

From The New York Times:

Walter Cronkite, an iconic CBS News journalist who defined the role of anchorman for a generation of television viewers, died Friday at the age of 92, his family said.

“My father Walter Cronkite died,” his son Chip said just before 8 p.m. Eastern. CBS interrupted prime time programming to show an obituary for the man who defined the network’s news division.

Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war, and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.

“It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” Sean McManus, the president of CBS News, said in a statement. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”

Mr. McManus added: “No matter what the news event was, Walter was always the consummate professional with an un-paralleled sense of compassion, integrity, humanity, warmth, and occasionally even humor. There will never be another figure in American history who will hold the position Walter held in our minds, our hearts and on the television. We were blessed to have this man in our lives and words cannot describe how much he will be missed by those of us at CBS News and by all of America.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/17/eveningnews/main5170556.shtml?tag=cbsContentWrap;cbsContent

Katie Couric on CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5170603n&tag=related;photovideo

Also:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/walter-cronkite-iconic-anchorman-dies/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31447291#31447291

Walter Cronkite's essays on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/cronkite/

Walter Cronkite: History's Lessons:
In a series of occasional essays for NPR, veteran journalist Walter Cronkite comments on news events he reported on over the past century that still resonate today.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6711860

Tom Shales (Washington Post):
"...He was ours, we were his, and he didn't so much deliver the news to us as join us in experiencing the world outside our own homes and schools and towns. He won virtually every award that is given out in the annals of broadcasting, but he won a lot more than that. He earned our friendship, our trust and even, as we perhaps now realize more than at any other time in the relationship, our love".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071703501.html?hpid=topnews

Howard Kurtz: Cronkite's passing, in the end, is the passing of an era, an era of black-and-white television, of mass audiences, of a slower time when the country waited for the headlines at 6:30 in the evening. No anchor -- no journalist -- will ever wield that authority again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071703787.html?sid%3DST2009071703376&sub=AR

About Walter Cronkite on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday (with Scott Simon):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106770499

Scott Simon on "Why There's No Place For Another Cronkite"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106770503


Boston Globe: Friends and locals on Martha’s Vineyard recalled Walter Cronkite as a summertime fixture who appreciated the quieter life of Dukes County when not in the anchor’s chair.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/19/vineyard_recalls_cronkites_love_of_sailing_life_on_the_island/

Finally, A NY Times Editorial Page appreciation from Verlyn Klinkenborg:
"....Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a world-changing war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/cronk2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

1 Comments:

Blogger John Lynner Peterson said...

http://johnlynnerpeterson.com/gallery/8944192_m7dRE/1/583653698_w2FcD

Walter Cronkite - American Icon, Broadcast Pioneer and Civil Libertarian.

These images are from an event in NYC a few years ago.

http://johnlynnerpeterson.com/gallery/8944192_m7dRE/1/583653698_w2FcD

8:41 AM  

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