And That's The Way It Was

When I was growing up and through my early adulthood, no one person could garner my attention more than Walter Cronkite. I am sure my parents thought I listened to him more than I did them. But, for honesty and integrity in reporting the news, Walter Cronkite was and will be, unsurpassed in keeping America appraised of the news events that shaped our daily lives.

I found two articles that combined; fully conclude the enormous impact Mr. Cronkite had during his news reporting career. The first article is by Brian Stelter of the New York Times; http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/remembering-the-way-it-was/
Explaining ‘The Way It Was’ to the YouTube Generation
By Brian Stelter
Sean McManus, the president of CBS News, learned of Walter Cronkite’s death while he was at the dinner table on Friday evening, sharing a meal with his two children, ages 8 and 10.
After taking the phone call, he tried to explain to his children — who have grown up bombarded with news and information — the value of Mr. Cronkite’s once-a-day news updates.
“There probably will never be anybody who has the presence and the stature and the importance that Walter Cronkite had in this country,” Mr. McManus said in a telephone interview, recalling what he told his children.
“I tried to explain to them that most people in America expected to get both good and bad news from one man, and that was Walter Cronkite,” he said. “That will never be duplicated again,” because of the fragmentation of the media.
Mr. McManus sensed that his children had a hard time comprehending what he meant.
“It’s really hard,” he acknowledged, “to remember just how influential and important he was.” He cited Mr. Cronkite’s famous declaration that the Vietnam war would end in a stalemate.
Viewers and Web readers now, he said, “are so used to being assaulted by so many streams of media that it’s hard for them to imagine that there were only three or four ways to get news and information on TV.”
On an evening when Mr. Cronkite was on the minds of the television industry, Mr. McManus sounded a sad note about the splintered media environment. TV executives are always looking for the next Cronkite, he said, “but I don’t think anybody will be in that position of prominence again.”
CBS News still operates out of the same building on West 57th Street in Manhattan where Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News.”
While he had not visited recently, Mr. McManus said, “his presence really is palpable in the halls of CBS News.” On Friday evening, the news division felt numb, even though Mr. Cronkite was known to be in ill health for some time.
A little more than a year ago, Mr. Cronkite paid a surprise visit to the news headquarters. Even the interns who weren’t yet born when Mr. Cronkite was anchor were “literally looking up to him,” Mr. McManus said.
“When he walked in the newsroom, it was like Thomas Jefferson walking into a history class at a university,” he said.

This second article is by Daniel Schorr, an iconic Journalist in his own right. As of this writing, the article is only hours old and will be accompanied by a television program, to be aired, later this evening on NPR (National Public Radio);
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106859991
News Analysis
by Daniel Schorr
Walter Cronkite Will Be Hard To Replace
Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET
All Things Considered, July 21, 2009 · I imagine that no one would have been more astonished and more delighted than Walter Cronkite at the vast amount of ink and airtime occasioned by his death last Friday. That a generation later he should share a global stage with the moon landing anniversary would have seemed only the natural order of things.
Three decades after he reluctantly vacated the anchor seat at CBS News, no one has come to fill his place in American hearts and minds as the prototype newsman, the most trusted man in America.
Once asked to run for office, he said, smilingly, that he could not step down.
His image was the impartial purveyor of facts, without bias or opinion. Actually, some of his most dramatic moments involved departures from objectivity. The spontaneous "Oh boy!" as he watched the moon landing; the catch in his throat when he announced that President Kennedy had died. The eruption, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here," from the anchor booth at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago when he saw Dan Rather being roughed up by security guards. And, famously, his 1968 visit to Vietnam and on-camera conclusion that the war was unwinnable and should be ended.
President Johnson told his aide Bill Moyers, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
Cronkite also drew on his reservoir of trust when it came to reporting the Watergate scandal. In October 1972, about a month before the election, Cronkite noted to me, as designated Watergate correspondent, that CBS wasn't giving enough attention to the deepening investigation.
"This has been mainly a newspaper story," he said. "It's time to make it a television story."
We put together two lengthy packages summarizing all that was known about the scandal.
Ben Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post, later said that Cronkite and CBS had turned a newspaper story into a national story.
No one commanded more confidence than this plainspoken newsman from the Midwest. And, given the trend toward tabloid journalism, we are not likely to soon see another "Uncle Walter."

So, of all the famous people who have died recently, Walter Cronkite is like loosing a close relative. Only a few other journalist, along with Edward R. Murrow, can stake a claim of honesty, integrity and confidence in reporting, that Walter Cronkite takes with him. Though many may try to emulate him, there is no one on the horizon, who can match the stature of this Journalistic Icon. And that’s the way it was.

That’s How I See It.

Websites of reference;
http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?fID=571&rID=3376
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106859991
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/20/2001774.aspx
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/remembering-the-way-it-was/