RIP, Walter Cronkite

Return with me now to the hallowed days of yesteryear, when significant portions of Americans would gather 'round the television in the evening and imbibe the news of the day.

No celebrity marriages, divorces or other interactions that would embarrass a zoo animal. No cutesy "news you can use" segments or "information that will help you protect your family." No bang-zap-pow graphics. No buzzy show titles like "The Situation Room" or "The Factor." Just what went on, when it went on, where it went on, and whether or not it might keep going on tomorrow.

One of the faces and voices of this kind of communication was Walter Cronkite, the anchor at the CBS Evening News. Cronkite's words in 1963 told America its president was dead. In 1969, his words and his moments of wordlessness communicated what many people felt as they watched Neil Armstrong step off his lunar lander onto the moon (Cronkite slept a total of three hours during the 40 hours between Apollo 11's insertion into lunar orbit and its departure; he spent the rest of the time on air or following reports).

One can argue about whether or not the identification of news with a single voice was a good thing. When a huge percentage of the information people get comes from just a few sources, and when reliability and accuracy are only among the criteria whereby those sources are judged instead of the primary criteria, then the possibilities of abuse breed like roaches.

News today comes in the same fashion -- we're told that this or that anchor, personality or reporter is accurate and can be trusted and believed, and that's why they're on the job. The connection between accuracy, trust and believability on the one hand and perfect hair, capped teeth and high Q ratings on the other is never explained, but it must be there, because everyone who I'm told has the former also seems to have the latter. But even though they all try to follow Uncle Walter's footsteps, none seem to attain his stature -- think of the Declaration of Independence. All those men signed it, saying and risking the same things. But John Hancock's the name that earned its own idiom.

Cronkite's reign at CBS Evening News helped create the current climate although he himself left, retiring in 1981, before some of its silliest iterations began to crop up. But whatever he begat by way of broadcast news aside, Cronkite saw himself as a reporter, first and foremost. A typewriter sat next to him at his anchor desk, available (and often used) to bang out a few lines of copy at the last second if new information came in on a story or if something completely new started breaking. Can you imagine any of the blow-dried newsMuppets manning local TV anchor desks being able to do that? On the national scene, if I close one eye and squint I could see NBC's Brian Williams in that mode, but former morning show personalities Charles Gibson of ABC or Katie Couric of CBS? The immaculately made-up Shepherd Smith of Fox? Shakespeare's works will spring from the keyboards of all those monkeys first.

I don't know if that's the way it is, but I'll settle for saying that's how I see it. Happy trails, Mr. Cronkite.