Walter Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” set.
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.
9.01.2010
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