As anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, Walter Cronkite was voice of a generation. Cronkite passed away Friday at the age of 92.
People – myself included – jumped on Twitter as soon as they heard the news Friday afternoon and since then much has been written on how there can never been another Cronkite. News cycles have changed. TV has changed. Network news doesn’t draw the audience it used to. And thanks to perceived failures and inaccuracies – and if we’re really being truthful here, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show – people don’t trust the news nor the people who produce and deliver it like they did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
But not then. Mine wasn’t a evening news-watching kind of family. But we tuned in for the big events. And Cronkite was there for many of them that helped shape the nation during that era.
Cronkite had consummate TV news voice: gravel-y and low, yet smooth and reassuring. Like your gramps giving it to you straight, good or bad
Some of Cronkite’s iconic TV moments:
- Announcing JFK has been shot, Nov. 22, 1963
- Reporting assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1968
- Condemning the Vietnam War in a rare on-air commentary, Feb. 27, 1968
- Watching Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, July 20, 1969. During the end of the first ever moon landing, Cronkite – an avid space buff – was on air 27 of the 30 hours the network devoted to the event.
Such mastery lends itself to appreciation – and satire, as evidenced by this send up that now deceased late-night host and comedian Johnny Carson did of Cronkite when he retired in March 1981. (It’s amazing how well that sketch holds up after 28 years.)
On Friday, President Obama weighed in with a few words for a CBS special on Cronkite, saying “In an era before blogs and e/mail, cell phones and cable, he was the news.”
You can read other peoples’ reminiscences of Cronkite on the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog.
Private funeral services for the anchorman will be held Thursday. A public tribute is being planned for “the next few weeks” at New York’s Lincoln Center, according to the Times.
What’s your favorite Cronkite memory?