When longtime (1962-81) anchorman Walter Cronkite signed off the "CBS Evening News" with his signature "And that's the way it is," his audience believed that's the way it was, for better or for worse. The avuncular newsman, after all, was often cited by opinion polls as the "most trusted man in America." Several of his peers remember him below.
Andy Rooney, newspaper columnist and television commentator: A tough, competitive scrambler
A group of reporters would meet at St. Pancras station and board a train for Bedford. Among the friends I made on those trips were...Walter Cronkite with United Press...
Cronkite had escaped being drafted because he was color-blind....
These reporters were my teachers although they didn't know it. While I tried to act more like one of them than a student, I watched and listened carefully. Anyone who thinks of Walter Cronkite today as the authoritative father figure of television news would be surprised to know what a tough, competitive scrambler he was in the old Front Page tradition of newspaper reporting. He became the best anchorman there ever was in television because he knew news when he saw it and cared about it. He was relentlessly inquisitive. The subject of his interview always sensed that Cronkite was interested in what he had to say and knew a great deal about the issue himself. (London, 1942)
From "My War, by Andy Rooney" (Times Books/Random House, 1995)
Charles Lynch, Canadian journalist: Swarming the king
During the closing stages of the war in Europe, the "theatre" as it was called was visited ... [by] King George … All proceeded to the airport where a roped-off compound had been prepared for the press. [Press commandant Colonel William "Tug"] Warrener stood in front of the column, baton tucked under his arm, head held high, chin outthrust as the royal DC-3 rolled to a stop. The door of the aircraft swung open, the steps dropped into place, and King George VI descended on the soil of liberated Europe for the first time.
Warrener saluted smartly, and as he did so Walter Cronkite of United Press vaulted over the rope barrier and made a dash for the King. Cronkite was known to be fearless, having dropped into Holland by parachute to cover the Arnhem operation, so I followed and so did everybody else, and poor Warrener was left rooted to the spot, uttering shouts of "Scum!" and "Back, you bastards!" while we swarmed around King George and bombarded him with questions. (Netherlands, 1944)
From "You Can't Print THAT!: Memoirs of a Political Voyeur," by Charles Lynch (Hurtig, 1983)
David Schoenbrun, broadcast journalist: Middle America, middle-of-the-road, Middlebrow
Something strange was happening in the CBS broadcasting booth high over the [1952 Republican national] convention floor. A young man, in his early thirties, with a flat Kansas prairie accent, who pronounced words like "going" as though they were spelled "goeen," was calling the story, shot by shot, straight, clear, factually. It was Walter Cronkite, who had won the assignment as anchorman of the convention....
Cronkite was a veteran UP wire-service reporter, who had learned to be the first and fastest with the facts. No punditing, no larger meaning of it all, no concern about why, only about who, what, when, where, and how. He was Middle America, middle-of-the-road, middlebrow. He was fascinated by what he was watching and he projected that fascination to his listeners in words they could understand. He knew everything that was going on, knew all the delegations, and by his knowledge managed to project an air of authority and truth. He was an overnight sensation, a national figure on his way to becoming the best known and most trusted man in the land. He would hit some bumps along the road and go into skids but he would end up as the giant of television. (Chicago)
From "America Inside Out: At Home & Abroad from Roosevelt to Reagan," by David Schoenbrun (McGraw-Hill, 1984)
Reuven Frank, television news executive: Making him famous
The 1952 [Republican and Democratic national] conventions were the first most Americans had seen. …
CBS's anchorman was the virtually unknown Walter Cronkite, who had signed on with CBS in its Washington bureau only two years before. A journalist since his college days, Cronkite had covered Eisenhower and his headquarters throughout the war in Euorpe…
…CBS…consciously gave him center stage and drew attention to him. The CBS producers developed what was for that time an ingenious procedure, putting Cronkite's face in a corner of the picture of the proceedings, the relative size of a postage stamp. As a technical achievement, it was simple and unsophisticated, but no one had done it that way before, and it helped make Cronkite famous.
From "Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News," by Reuven Frank (Simon & Schuster, 1991)
Eve Arden, actor: The difference one man can make
We were given a welcome-back [from Europe] party by Dottie Leffler, a CBS publicist who had become a good friend while doing publicity for "Miss Brooks." That evening I was miserable with what I thought might be the flu....When I arrived, I still felt awful, so Dottie took me to the guest room to relax awhile. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when suddenly Dottie appeared in the door saying, "Here's some company for you," and in walked Walter and Mrs. Cronkite and their daughter Kathy.
As we talked I began to feel better and better. He's always had that effect on me, whether on TV or the few times we happened to meet him on the street. He makes me believe in the difference that one man can make in this world. (New York, 1953)
From "Three Phases of Eve," by Eve Arden (St. Martin's Press, 1985)
Billy Graham, evangelist: Leading questions
I went to be interviewed by Walter Cronkite for his CBS television news show, recorded for broadcast the following night. He was an amiable host, and we had a great time, sitting together in a room overlooking Times Square. He asked the kind of leading questions I love to answer, about our work, our objectives, the message we preached, and what we had to offer New York.
The news staff then screened some film clips that they had taken around Times Square and Broadway, and Walter asked me to comment on them. I observed that thousands of frustrated and bewildered people there who were searching for reality, could find it if they would give their lives to Christ. (New York, 1957)
From "Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham" (HarperCollins, 1997)
Fred Davis, TV game show host: Marvelous man
One of my favorite moments was when we had Walter Cronkite up [to Toronto], in the old days, as a guest panelist [on CBC's "Front Page Challenge"], before he became Uncle Walter. A marvelous man. And I took a chance. You know, you think with these big-timers they're so busy, or they want to be alone. And sometimes they end up in their hotel room with nothing to do. And I said, after the show, "You wouldn't like to come home and have a cup of coffee or a drink, would you?" And he said, "I'd love it." And three of the most valuable hours I've ever had followed. Jo [Mrs. Davis] and I and Walter Cronkite sitting there." (late 1950s)
From "Front Page Challenge," by Alex Barris (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1981)
Don Hewitt, television producer: Irresistible
Walter Cronkite replaced Douglas Edwards on the evening news. It wasn't that Doug wasn't first rate, it was that Cronkite was irresistible. He had "anchorman" written all over his face. The CBS brass only had to take one look at this former United Press correspondent and they were ready to make a major commitment to television news. They seemed happy to have me on board as his sidekick. (New York, 1962)
From "Minute by Minute...," by Don Hewitt (Random House, 1985)
Dick Gregory, comedian and activist: Knew more than he reported
I carried the road show in my briefcase. It consisted basically of a copy of Life magazine, which showed still shots of the assassination [of John F. Kennedy] taken from Abraham Zapruder's home movie of the motorcade, along with some other useful and revealing photos. I presented my assassination road show in nightclub and concert hall dressing rooms, press conferences and personal conversations all across the country.
One night in my dressing room at the Village Gate in New York City, I showed my road show material to Walter Cronkite. I pointed out that the Zapruder film shows that Governor Connally was not hit until seconds after the president was struck. They couldn't have been hit by the same bullet...
Walter listened to my assassination rap with interest and patience. My stuff never made it on the "CBS Evening News" … It wasn't out of character for Walter to know a whole lot more than he reports on the evening news! (1964)
From "Up From Nigger," by Dick Gregory (Stein and Day, 1976)
Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer: "My father will be thrilled"
I taped a show with Walter Cronkite, who was narrating a program on the future, one called "The Twenty-first Century." I was rather excited about this, for I admired Cronkite extravagantly.
I sat down in a chair across a low, round table from him, and while the technicians fiddled with the light, I wondered whether I could say, "My father will be very thrilled, Mr. Cronkite, when he finds out you've interviewed me."
It seemed so childish a remark that I didn't dare make it. I was afraid Cronkite would call off the whole thing in disgust.
My hesitation gave him the chance to speak first. He said, "Well, Dr. Asimov, my father will be very thrilled when he finds out I've interviewed you." (New York, 1968)
From "In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov," 1954-1978 (Doubleday, 1980)
Billy Crystal, actor and comedian: Light in his eyes
I was going to NYU and working as an usher at a theater playing "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" when Walter Cronkite handed me his ticket stub. I led him by flashlight to his seat, then knelt down, shined the flashlight in my own face and said, "Mr. Cronkite, if there's anything I can do to help you in any way during the show, please don't hesitate to let me know." Then, automatically, without thinking, I flipped the flashlight into his face as though it were a hand mike. "Yes, there is," Walter Cronkite said. "You can take the flashlight out of my eyes." (New York, late 1960s)
From "Absolutely Mahvelous," by Billy Crystal with Dick Schaap (G.P. Putnam's, 1986)
Abbie Hoffman, political activist: Image advice
"Hi, Abbie, this is Walter," said the voice.
"Walter!" I responded excitedly, "but how can that be? I'm watching you right now on television."
"It's taped," said the Anchorman.
A few months previous Cronkite had worn horn-rimmed glasses. After studying the effect for three days, I wrote him a letter recommending that he get contact lenses. I thought the effect of his glasses was detrimental to his image … "I took your advice, you know," he offered graciously.
"We don't want to lose you, Walter," I said. "What's on your mind?"
"I'd like to interview you -- live, for 20 minutes, about the collapse of the movement," he said.
His voice signed off exactly on cue with the television set. An experience to contemplate, talking live to Walter Cronkite while he sped home to Connecticut in his limousine, yet watching him "live" on television. (New York, 1969)
From "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture," by Abbie Hoffman (G.P. Putnam's, 1980)
Sally Quinn, journalist: Unaffected
… the tenth anniversary of "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." He was our interview [on "CBS Morning News"] that morning. I was excited because I admire Cronkite as both a good print journalist and a good television journalist. And for someone who has achieved such near reverence, he is easy, natural, unaffected, smart, gentle and funny. Cronkite has a beguiling, self-deprecating sense of humor and an appetite for an occasional salty joke....
I was surprised at how comfortable I felt, even at the start of the interview, because I had been ill at ease at the thought of interviewing such a veteran. But Cronkite, though, not nervous, seemed less comfortable at being interviewed than we were interviewing him. (New York, 1972)
From "We're Going to Make You a Star," by Sally Quinn (Simon and Schuster, 1975)
Lesley Stahl, broadcast journalist: Convivial and unpretentious
The first time I met Walter Cronkite, I was surprised at how young he looked in person. I had always heard that television makes you look ten years older; it put 20 years on Cronkite. I liked him right away, but then, most people did. Convivial and unpretentious, he is of that rare breed who wear the cloak of fame comfortably.
He was our leader in the true sense. If he as much as breathed that we in the bureau had been second best on a story, we'd pour ashes on our heads for a week. Once Cronkite thought a story had merit, CBS would pounce on it with full energy, as with the space launches. And in the unusual case when he took a stand on an issue, it had enormous influence. (New York, early 1970s)
From "Reporting Live," by Lesley Stahl (Simon & Schuster, 1999)
William Goldman, screenwriter: Script trouble
It was eventually common knowledge that I had written a dud ... Time wrote an article about the progress of the movie and mentioned the lack of quality in what I'd done...
I was at CBS once in the news department and Walter Cronkite was walking along a corridor. The guy I was with knew Cronkite and introduced us, which pleased me because during this Watergate time, when everyone was lying, he was among the few Americans you could trust. Following is the entire conversation:
MY FRIEND: Walter this is Bill Goldman who's writing "All the President's Men."
ME: How do you do, sir.
CRONKITE: I hear you've got script trouble. (and he continued on his way) (New York, mid-1970s)
From "Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting," by William Goldman (Warner Books, 1983)
Julia Phillips, film director: Didn't disappoint
Walter is one of the few big stars I have met who wasn't a disappointment. He'd been gracious enough to meet me and Steven [Spielberg] in the hooker-laden bar at the Sherry Netherland to talk about the remote possibility of playing the anchorman reporting the nerve-gas derailment/coverup on the network news [in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"]. Why not?
He had been an everyday fan/observer in Martha's Vineyard while Steven was shooting Jaws... (New York, 1975)
From "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again," by Julia Phillips (Random House, 1991)
Patrick Buchanan, speechwriter, conservative commentator and presidential candidate: Truckled
Hank, who had been the accountant for CREEP, Richard Nixon's now infamous 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President, was suing CBS and Walter Cronkite for malicious libel. Cronkite had led his "Evening News," during the thick of the Watergate revelations, with the charge that Henry Buchanan, brother to White House aide Patrick Buchanan, had been operating a "laundry" in Bethesda for cleaning dirty money. The charge was utterly baseless; CBS had been worse than sloppy; and Hank intended to prove it in court.
At the Radio-TV Correspondents Dinner that year, as I was chatting away, I turned to have a friend introduce me, face to face, to the Most Trusted Man in America, the man I believed had libeled my brother. Cronkite extended his hand, smiled, and said graciously, "Hello, Pat, how are you?" Instead of some witty and cutting riposte, I responded, "Fine, Mr. Cronkite; how are you, sir?"
The rest of the night, I was beside myself for giving the appearance of having truckled. Both the "Mr." and the "sir" had come out automatically, reflexively, because Walter Cronkite was an older man, and because of those years of indoctrination. (Washington, D.C., mid-1970s)
From "Right from the Beginning," by Patrick Buchanan (Little, Brown, 1988)
Ronald Reagan, president (1981-1989): Didn't throw any slow balls
Tuesday, March 3 [1981]
During the day I did a 1 hr. interview with Walter Cronkite -- his last for CBS. He spent the 1st 20 min's. on El Salvador. He didn't throw any slow balls but the reaction was favorable. Because of our dinner we couldn't watch the show but I was treated to another W. H. [White House] service. They taped the program & played it back for us later in the evening.
From "The Reagan Diaries," ed. By Douglas Brinkley (HarperCollins, 2007)
Knowlton Nash, broadcast journalist: Intense competitiveness
When he retired in the spring of 1981, I flew down to New York to interview him for [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's] "Newsmagazine." In private he was basically the same as on the TV screen -- a comfortable, reliable, knowledgeable "Uncle Walter." But one thing not seen was his intense competitiveness. Nobody in the news business was more intent on beating the competition than Cronkite, a character trait probably from his days as a United Press news agency reporter, which was part of my background, too.
"I'll miss getting my hands into the product every day ... that's been my life," he told me. When I asked this "most respected man in America," as opinion surveys had declared him, his feelings about the enormously high audience impact of TV news, he replied, "It's far beyond reason...far beyond acceptability...What we can do is a bare microcosm of what the people need to know." He, of course, was right.
He worried, too, about "showmanship" in TV news -- the "giggle factor," he called it.
From "History on the Run: The Trenchcoat Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent," by Knowlton Nash (McClelland and Stewart, 1984)
Andy Warhol, pop artist: Nixon's language
Yoko's [Ono's] black-tie birthday dinner for Vasarely's...to the Dakota and had to leave our shoes in the hallway ... I sat next to Walter Cronkite...
I talked to Walter Cronkite and that was interesting. I told him I'd just read the Jody Powell thing in Rolling Stone. He said he thought Carter was the most intelligent president. And he said that years ago when he went to interview Nixon one of those times he was running for president, they sat him outside the door and he heard Nixon on the phone saying "piss" and "cocksucker" and "fuck," and Walter Cronkite thought it was a setup to have him hear all this so he would think Nixon was really macho, but then years later when the Watergate tapes came out he was surprised to hear Nixon talking like that all the time. (New York, 1984)
From "Diaries,' by Andy Warhol, ed. by Pat Hackett (Warner Books, 1989)
Ann Richards, Texas governor (1990-1994): Talking Texas
I went looking [at the Democratic National Convention] for Walter Cronkite.
I had know Walter for a number of years, had been a guest speaker at a roast for him in Washington several years before. He had already called the hotel and said that if I got a chance I should come over and see him at the convention hall. He's a warrior in the media battle, and he can set the tone for an entire broadcast. If Walter, by treatment or inflection or posture, makes it clear that you're worth people's 1time, then your stock can just take off.
"Walter," I said when I found him, "I want you to be prepared for what kind of [keynote] speech you're going to hear from me tonight." He looked at me. "I'm going to talk Texas."
He laughed. "Oh, well that's great." (Atlanta, 1988)
From "Straight from the Heart: My Life in Politics & Other Places," by Ann Richards with Peter Knobler (Simon and Schuster, 1989)
Peter Arnett, war correspondent: Words of caution
Walter Cronkite came on the air from CNN's Washington bureau. The grand old man of television was in a philosophical mood as he chatted about the handful of American correspondents who had stayed in enemy capitals in the earliest days of World War Two. "I don't think the danger in Berlin or Tokyo, either one, was particularly imminent as it is for Baghdad today [during the Gulf War]," he observed.
Cronkite gave me some friendly advice over the air. "Peter, you're a very valuable asset to courageous reporting around the world. You've proved that. Don't grandstand this one. If you take all those things into consideration. Why, you know, save your skin, boy."
For a moment I stared blankly into the four-wire microphone. I did not expect to hear this from Walter Cronkite, one of my role models. Why did everyone want me to retire? (Washington, D.C./Baghdad, 1991)
From "Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones," by Peter Arnett (Simon & Schuster, 1994)
Helen Caldicott, physician and Nuclear Freeze activist: What he thinks
Walter Cronkite...was charming. When I met him and his wife, Betsy, at dinner one night, Walter amazed me by saying that if he had his way, he would remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. "What would the Russians do then, roll over people with their tanks?" he asked.
I said: "The American people love you, Walter. Why don't you tell them that?"
He laughed and replied, "I'm only loved because they don't know what I think." (New York, 1980)
From "A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography," by Helen Caldicott (Norton, 1996)
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch lunched with Senate Democrats this week and tried to convince them that his merger with DirecTV was a good thing. They came back at him with critiques of his Fox News, saying that it could be more "Fair and Balanced" than it says it is. Rupert was shocked, shocked! that the Dems saw it that way. Said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.: "He said Fox News is fair and balanced and he just can't imagine that there was any kind of a slant there. Members of the Senate were just speechless." Durbin said the one thing they agreed on was a point Murdoch made: that "The Simpsons" is the best show on television. What a relief. (Variety)
One hopes that the mayor of Venice, Italy, will be more open-minded than New York's Rudy Giuliani was about the artwork of Chris Ofili. The artist, who made headlines when his elephant dung painting of the Virgin Mary at the Brooklyn Museum was denounced by Rudy, is headlining the Venice Biennale opening this weekend. Previews note that his work this year includes paintings of "romantic scenes between two lovers against an exotic background." Shouldn't cause too much ruckus in Venice -- that's what goes on every day there anyway. (BBC)
Speaking of mayors, does it sound like Michael Bloomberg is getting a bit nervous? When asked what he thought of Bill Clinton possibly challenging him for the job in 2005 he said, "I sort of recommend that he think about it for the next six years, because he'd have a tough time winning before that." This, from a guy whose approval rating is at 24 percent. (New York Daily News)
Leave it to Dave Eggers to come up with another marketing inspiration. Word is that the word guy is going to release his next book under the byline "Dave" -- no last name. An idea of staggering genius. (New York Post)
In an example of staggering something, our old pal Sean "P. Diddy" Combs claims that he and Jennifer Lopez started the whole celeb-with-celeb dating thing: "The new trend of dating another celebrity -- I basically started that," he said. Guess he's never heard of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio or Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh or Warren Beatty and (you fill in the blank). (WENN)
-- Karen Croft
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At least one cultural treasure has been rescued from Baghdad: Saddam Hussein's last novel. The book, "Get out of here, curse you!" was about to go on sale "when U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq on March 20. It never saw the light of day," Reuters reports, adding that the wire service managed to snag from storage one of the few copies that "survived U.S. bombs and Iraqi looters." And? Typical Saddam, according to Ali Abdel-Amir, a writer with a deep knowledge of Saddam's three previous books. "I found that Saddam's books showed he had a deep sense of individualism, he used stereotypes, was shallow," says Abdel-Amir, noting that the books, while written by committee, were outlined and approved by the former Iraqi leader. "Women were always unfaithful and were either Kurds or Iranians." And -- don't tell me -- the heroes always had fluffy 'staches, right? (Reuters via Instapundit)
Johnny Carson on David Brinkley, with whom he was "close friends": "He was one of the people I most enjoyed being with; he was delightful company. He was intelligent, honest and witty as hell, and he was so darned self-effacing, which is one of the things I most admired about him." Carson recalls that Brinkley recently told him that "if he were a young man trying to get a job in TV news today, he couldn't because he doesn't look like an anchorman is supposed to look." (The Washington Post)
Walter Cronkite, also sad to lose his colleague Brinkley, has issued a statement to that effect: "It is difficult to believe that we will never again hear his distinctive voice giving us his humorous view of our complicated world." (Los Angeles Times)
What's that about a vast right-wing conspiracy again? Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton's book is being attacked by her usual antagonists. But Jonah Goldberg (Lucianne's son) is taking aim not only at Hillary but at her publisher, too. "I think Simon and Schuster is lying," Goldberg writes in a posting on the National Review's Web site. "The 'leak' to the Associated Press was bogus and almost certainly came from Simon and Schuster. It helped book sales, generated buzz and was timed perfectly. The idea that they were angry didn't pass the laugh test." Goldberg also contends that S&S's claim to have printed 1 million copies is also "probably a lie" and reports that the book sold 200,000 copies on its day of release "impossible."
Sen. Clinton is also getting that liar label flung at her from some unlikely corners: ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook gripes that she's, essentially, pulling a Saddam. And former friend Dick Morris wants her to come clean about that time her husband, the president, "ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me." And the fact that Hillary came to his rescue and told him that Bill "only does that to people he loves," as Morris recalls it, apparently doesn't satisfy him at all. But as Joe Conason points out convincingly, Morris' story has changed dramatically over the years.
Let's hope Hillary maintains her balance a little better than President Bush. The POTUS is apparently still recovering his composure after falling off a Segway scooter thingy in the driveway of his parents' house in Kennebunkport, Maine. Check out the play-by-play here. His father apparently fared much better.
The antidote to all those cloying messages on Marthatalks.com? Marthasings.com: "OK. I admit. You got me. I am a straight up criminal. I am a gangsta ... Saddam Hussein is one of my best friends. " No, I don't think that's where he got the idea that women were unfaithful.
And now for the obligatory celebrity-body-part mention: Britney Spears is about to get a pair of "inflatable, throbbing breasts." Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London is planning to make a new Spears figure with boobs that heave in time to her music. The new bust is apparently groundbreaking: "Brad Pitt has got a squeezable (latex) bum," a museum spokeswoman told Reuters, "but Britney would be the first with heaving bosoms."
-- Amy Reiter
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The intersection of politics and Hollywood has always been a compelling one. The war is now on, and questions in the air include "Is Saddam dead or alive?" and "Will Meryl Streep attend the Oscars?" We don't have the answer to either one, but the information is trickling in. So far, Will Smith is out, Catherine Zeta-Jones is in (unless she gives birth) (Billboard); Cate Blanchett is out, the Barbara Walters special has been postponed (LA Times) and Meryl Streep is "making noises" about canceling. (Page Six) And those stars who do show may stage a symbolic protest when the living honorees are all onstage at once to celebrate the diamond anniversary. (LA Weekly)
If you want to check out of reality and focus instead on what Britney Spears is up to, we hear she's dating MTV host Mike Kasem and that he's being a positive influence on her. Thank god. (WENN)
Where was Peter Jennings? When war broke out at 9:30 p.m. (EST) last night NBC had Tom Brokaw and Desert Storm vet Peter Arnett, CBS had Dan Rather ready to go, but Jennings didn't show at ABC until about 10 p.m. (Tom Shales) Meanwhile, former anchor and uncle to us all Walter Cronkite was at Drew University last night and said he thought that "The arrogance of our spokespeople, even the president himself, has been exceptional." (Daily Record)
Monica Lewinsky will host a Fox reality show, starting April 21, called "Mr. Personality." The concept: A young, single, beautiful woman will court several guys and will make her choice based on their souls, not their baby blues. This will happen because the men will be wearing masks or hoods during the dating process. We think this story sounds like it's from the Onion, but it's not. It's from the Washington Post, so we assume it's true.
It's Robbie Williams vs. Madonna in a grudge match! Robbie went on record saying his new release "Happy Easter (War Is Coming)" is not antiwar. Madonna's song "American Life" will be accompanied by an antiwar video. Both will be out April 14. (Ananova)
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Those of you looking to escape reality by turning to reality TV, be warned: Things aren't going so well for denizens of that alterna-world these days either.
Original "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch, for instance, won't be shaking his blurry booty quite so saucily for a little while. On Monday, a judge in Newport, R.I., apparently found Hatch's ends-justify-the-means routine even less charming than TV audiences did and so found him guilty of the domestic assault charges brought against him by his ex-boyfriend Glenn Boyanowski.
Judge Pirraglia sentenced Hatch to one year of probation for allegedly roughing up Boyanowski and pushing him down the stairs during a confrontation in August.
Hatch, however, has vowed not to give up the fight. "It's a ludicrous ruling," he said in a radio interview after the trial, "and I'm not sure what's behind the judge's personal reasons for it, but it's certainly not objective."
But at least Hatch has happy memories of Pulau Tiga to comfort him. Michael Skupin, the boar-butchering contestant who suffered severe burns during the filming of "Survivor II," has apparently emerged relatively unscathed after another brush with death.
According to the Associated Press, Skupin, his wife, Penny, and the couple's 3-year-old daughter had nothing more serious than scratches and bruises on Sunday after a twin-engine plane they were flying in made a crash landing on a rocky stretch of a Lake Michigan beach. The plane's pilot and three other passengers were all OK, too, though the plane itself ended up in pieces.
"It really is an act of God that we just walked away," Skupin told the press on Monday.
"We knew we were going down," Skupin said of the moments after the plane's engines failed. "I prayed the whole time, nonstop. I had a peaceful feeling. ... I just felt, somehow, that we were going to be OK."
Meanwhile, Mark Burnett and his fellow "Survivor" producers have decided to exercise their free will and call off their plans to film the show's fourth installment in the Middle East. Given the recent terrorist attacks, they're apparently thinking it might be a preferable to film it in Tahiti instead.
And no, I don't know if Richard Hatch's probation will allow him to put in a guest appearance.
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Show some emotion
"I don't blame anybody for showing emotion on the air. I don't think I would trust a reporter, male or female, who didn't show any emotion."
-- Walter Cronkite, defending Dan Rather's right to cry, in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Beneficial bits
Talk about finding relief in humor. Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, Colin Quinn, Will Ferrell and George Wallace are set to headline a comedy event benefiting the Twin Towers Fund and the New York Police and Fire Widow and Children Benefit Fund. The event, dubbed "Stand Up for New York," will take place at Carnegie Hall in New York on Oct. 8. Tickets, which go on sale this Thursday, range from $100 to $2,500. Sounds like the polar opposite of the show about nothing ...
Joan Rivers might have boycotted, but the celebrities who went ahead and lent their voices to that all-star rendition of Sister Sledge's "We Are Family," recorded over the weekend to raise money to promote racial harmony in the U.S in the aftermath of the attacks, are feeling right proud of themselves. "Right now, while we are all thinking about the victims of the tragedy of Sept. 11, we need to start thinking about the victims that we're going to create right here in our homeland by people who are just so ignorant, filled with hatred and fear," Montel Williams, who coordinated the recording session, told the press. And Jackson Browne added, "It's a relief to have something positive to do in the face of so much hatred, and to have an opportunity to try and make sure we don't go doing what's been done to us."
And a bevy of stars continue to raise money for families of the victims of the attacks. The $150 million in pledges raised so far by last weeks "America: A Tribute to Heroes" telethon is apparently just the beginning. According to the New York Daily News, a CD featuring music from the telethon, which included songs by Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Celine Dion and many others, will be out in the next few weeks. All the artists involved have agreed to forgo their regular fees so that proceeds from the album can go straight to the United Way's specially earmarked fund.
Speaking of Celine Dion, she's apparently dedicating the time she might have spent fighting those scurrilous topless sunbathing reports to headlining a five-hour show in Montreal to raise even more money for the victims of the attacks. The proceeds from the show, which will be held later this week and will include performances by about 200 Quebec artists, will be administered through the Red Cross.
Also raising money for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund: Siegfried & Roy. The illusionists and big cat canoodlers have announced plans to donate their salaries from this Friday's show at the MGM Mirage in Las Vegas to the relief efforts. The casino will follow suit with a $1 million donation on behalf of the show's cast and crew. Way to go, tigers.
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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.
He has been called the most trusted man in America. His 60-year-long journalistic career has spanned the Great Depression, several wars, and the extraordinary changes that have engulfed the U.S. over the last two-thirds of the 20th century.
At the age of eighty, Walter Cronkite wrote his life story--the personal and professional odyssey of the original "anchorman" for whom that very word was coined. Cronkite set a standard for integrity, objectivity, enthusiasm, compassion, and insight that is difficult to surpass. He is an overflowing vessel of history, and a direct link with the people and places he reported about.
Walter Cronkite helped launch the juggernaut of television, and tried to imbue it with his own respect for quality and ethics; but now he occupies a ringside seat during the decline of his profession and the ascent of the lowest common denominator. As he aptly observes, "They'd rewrite Exodus to include a car chase." Still, plenty of people know the difference. They know that for decades they have had the privilege of getting their news from a gentleman of the highest caliber.
media criticism hasn't changed much since Spiro Agnew's 1970 denunciation of the "nattering nabobs of negativism," the effete media elites who look down their noses at the "silent majority." Oh, sure, there's a lot more media criticism today, professional and amateur. But whether the critic hails from the right, the left, or the center, or affects some postmodern political mishmash that won't even fit on the charts, the complaint is largely the same: that the media is out of touch, imposing its own, possibly pernicious, agenda on the rest of us. Noam Chomsky believes that the people hunger for news about East Timor The New York Times doesn't see fit to print; right-wingers believe the press is hiding the truth about Vince Foster.Over the past several years, a new breed of media critic has begun to emerge, one that sees the perfidy and obsolescence of the old media as the inevitable outcome of its old-fashioned ways and out-of-date technology. For salvation, these critics look to new communications technologies, especially the Internet.
In the pages of Wired, hot-button novelist Michael Crichton announced the imminent death of the old-media "Mediasaurus", which he described as an obsolete institution that, like Detroit in the 1970s, seems intent on producing a "product of very poor quality" with "too much chrome and glitz." And in HotWired, journalist Josh Quittner announced the birth of the
These were but the opening salvos in what has become a barrage. In "Wired Style", a new media manifesto disguised as a style guide for way new editors, Wired's Constance Hale celebrates a new kind of writing that "jacks us in to the soul of a new society" which sure sounds cool, whatever it might possibly mean. And Jon Katz, in both his "Media Rant" column on HotWired's Netizen site and in his new book "Virtuous Reality," has attempted to spell out in detail a new kind of journalism and a "new code of media ethics" for the interactive age. (Katz's book, it should be noted, is primarily an attack on moral-values bullies like William Bennett; his evangelizing for new media slips in the side door.)
At first glance, these critics would seem to share little with one another, beyond their hatred of old media and their Wired connections. Crichton, for his part, is tired of all the "flashy chrome trim" one sees every night on the network news; he wants the facts, just the facts, and lots of them. Today, he argues, "the news of television and in newspapers is generally perceived as less accurate, less objective, less informed than it was a decade ago." Though he has a lot of them himself, Crichton doesn't want to have to hear the glib opinions of others. He wants raw data and "good information;" he wants a news service "in which all the facts [are] true, the quotes [aren't] piped, the statistics [are] presented by someone who knew something about statistics."
Katz, by contrast, likes opinions, his own and those of others. Like most writers on the Web (including those in Salon), he is primarily a commentator, not a reporter. To Katz, media "objectivity" is part of the problem. Hale, in Wired Style, agrees. "We celebrate subjectivity," she writes. "As far as we're concerned, it's OK to have fun with facts."
But Crichton and Katz have more in common than you might think: both prefer the raw to the cooked. They seek a journalism free of intermediaries, one that erodes the distinction between news "consumer" and news "producer." Crichton would like, essentially, to do his own reporting to dig up facts and assemble his own interpretations from them. He wants to "remove [the] filters" between himself and the raw data of the news, freeing himself from such encumbrances as "Dan Rather, or the front page editor, or the reporter who pruned the facts in order to be lively and vivid."
Katz, too, argues against too much filtering. What he wants is journalism as he imagines the founding fathers practiced it, back in the days when "there was almost no distinction between citizens and journalists," before editors and elite media stars set themselves up as "gatekeepers" for the news.
In a series of developments that Katz argues have "shaken the old order down to its wingtips," new technologies have made possible a return to a truly democratic kind of journalism, based on the notion of almost unlimited interactivity. Katz finds the very notion exhilarating. "The idea that we can question and talk directly to one another, without relying on journalists as intermediaries," he writes, "transforms the notion of culture."
All it takes is a computer and modem and a few rudimentary HTML skills: virtually anyone can compete directly with media giants like Time Magazine. "Now anybody with a VCR, cable box or computer is a miniature media tycoon, a little Bill Paley," Katz writes. "Millions of Americans are faxing, e-mailing and calling voice-mail boxes to sound off on every conceivable issue. Tens of thousands of idiosyncratic Web sites and home pages have sprung up on the ... Internet. This is more freedom of the press than journalists conceive of in their worst nightmares." Indeed, so convinced is Katz of the power of interactivity he refuses to write for publications that won't allow him to attach his e-mail address to his prose.For Katz, as well as for Hale, this opposition to filtering extends into the realm of style. For Hale, "rough-edged ... over-the-top" writing has much more appeal than well-burnished prose. Hale and Katz hope that the new journalism can draw upon the raw, frantic energy one finds in e-mail and Usenet postings, filled with prose bashed out without pause and without correction. The "new fractured language" said to emerge is "definitely not as elegant or polished as English used to be, but in a way, much more vital," Katz explains.
In a section of "Wired Style" called, with typical neo-adolescent bravado, "Screw The Rules," Hale tells her readers that "[p]rovocative writing demands out-of-the-box thinking, a calculated willingness to break many of journalism's cardinal rules." And what exactly does this mean? Letting your writers explore the limits of their four-letter-word vocabulary. A refusal to edit away their grammatical errors. Hale likes the idea of "preserv[ing] every odd comma and random reference in a writer's stream of consciousness," demanding that editors, when faced with energetically lumpy prose, "resist filing it down, polishing it, editing it away." Katz, too, wages a kind of guerrilla war against editing, chastising The New York Times for having the gall to polish his writing and praising his editors at HotWired, who more or less let him be.
of course, it's not as if the old media has remained quietly shaking in its wingtips. Quite a few of its representatives have responded in kind to the onslaught of way new criticism. "I'm very worried about the Internet," Walter Cronkite recently told The San Francisco Chronicle. "People get on there and pretend they're giving the news and have absolutely no ethical standards on which they're operating and no facilities, nor experience to do it. It's a very dangerous thing. I hope this shakes down in a little while. I have a feeling that ... eventually the standard news organizations, both the networks and newspapers, will dominate on the Internet for news dissemination." (This last bit must seem, to Katz and the rest, like the wounded bellow of Mediasaurus Rex shortly before it turns into fossil fuel.) Cronkite's best-selling "A Reporter's Life" is hardly an old-media manifesto, but alongside his avuncular retellings of endless old-media war stories, Cronkite sketches out the basic assumptions of his kind of reporting. And in his memoir "One Man's America," former Time editor Henry Grunwald recounts his life in and out of journalism over the course of half a century — in the process telling us a great deal about the journalistic ideals that lay behind the legendary "Time style." The two do not, by any means, present a united front. Cronkite, for his part, offers up a rather clunky defense of journalistic objectivity ("My job was to try as hard as I could to remove every trace of opinion from the broadcast. ... If people knew how I felt on an issue ... I had failed in my mission"). Grunwald, by contrast, dismisses the notion of objectivity as "largely phony;" he'd most likely see Cronkite's carefully guarded neutrality as little more than an elaborate, and not altogether honest, kind of play-acting. (Time itself never maintained a rigid distinction between reporting and editorializing.) But both men would look askance at the way-new insistence on journalism-in-the-raw: they prefer their journalism processed and filtered. Cronkite learned his trade in the bustling newsrooms of the United Press — writing, rewriting, and otherwise manufacturing copy wholesale for the "teletype machines clatter[ing] twenty-four hours a day, an insatiable maw demanding sixty words of copy a minute." In such an environment, anyone who insisted on "preserv[ing] every odd comma and random reference" in a piece of prose would be out the door in a minute. And it is hard to imagine any journalism more processed than that practiced by Time Magazine in days of old. Under the Time system, correspondents would send their reports to the Time main office; these reports would form the raw material from which writers would construct a story; their stories would in turn go to one editor, then another, then would be sent on to a team of researchers who would verify all the facts in the piece, certifying "with a pencil dot over every word, that the story was correct." All this editing was designed not only to ward off libel suits, but to make sure all the prose in the magazine read as if produced by the same machine.And both Cronkite and Grunwald are unabashed in their defense of the journalist as a gatekeeper of the news. In one rather astonishing passage in Cronkite's generally less-than-astonishing book, he defends FDR's habit of holding informal (and off the record) press conferences — more like conversations, really — with assorted representatives of the White House press corps. "When the President felt the urge, he'd send the word and the dozen or so newsmen would pile into the Oval Office and stand in a semi-circle around his desk," Cronkite recalls. "The conversation was a free-for-all ... Nothing could be attributed to the President unless he gave specific approval. It was a wonderful system." Nothing could better symbolize the operation of the media "filter:" a tiny cadre of reporters given privileged information from on high, which they were duty-bound not to tell the public at large.
It's easy enough to see the flaws in the old style of journalism. Heavily processed prose can be flat and dull or merely mannered; it's hard for an individual voice to survive editing by committee. And a too-rigid belief in journalists-as-gatekeepers can lead to an insider's arrogance. When such arrogance is combined with a too-cozy relationship with the powers that be, it can become both insufferable and dangerous (see Christopher Hitchens' Salon essay on the ultimate "access" journalist, Bob Woodward.) Those who rock the boat the least, who can offer up conventional-wisdom-on-demand with a practiced assurance, get the biggest rewards. Rotating-door political advisor/political pundit David Gergen pulled in nearly half a million dollars from speaking engagements in one year (1992), sharing his wisdom with everyone from the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Cosmetics and Toiletries Association. And the Beltway media's ultimate insider couple — ABC's Cokie Roberts and her husband Stephen Roberts, formerly of U.S. News — once pocketed $45,000 for appearing at a breakfast and luncheon held by Chicago's Northern Trust Bank. (By my calculations, that's more than $10,000 per plate — unless they had seconds.) These large bags of loot may compromise their recipients' ability to report fairly— or at least increase their tendency to see the world through a plutocratic lens. Compared to the closed, incestuous and often stale world of traditional elite journalism, the wild heterogeneity of voices on the Web is certainly refreshing. But is a journalism free of filters really the answer to the old media's shortcomings? I'm not so sure. For one thing, it's much less efficient. I don't have the time or the energy to make sense of the raw data on every issue that's out there; I'd rather base my assessments on the informed opinions of journalists I can trust. And I don't have the patience to wade through the unprocessed words of thousands of citizen-journalists mouthing off on the issues of the day. Michael Kinsley was right: There's a reason some people get paid to write and others don't. No amount of quasi-populist argumentation will transform the typical Usenet blowhard into Tom Paine. "Time style," as it was called in its heyday, with its gratuitous overlays of adjectives and its penchant for inverted sentences, was easy enough to parody. ("Backwards ran the sentences until reeled the mind," The New Yorker wrote.) And I can't imagine any writer I know being able to put up with Time's assembly-line-journalism for more than a week. Yet as Grunwald makes all too clear, behind the elaborate fussiness of Time's editing style one found a real respect, even love, for language. "We worshipped words, played with them, laughed over them, made fools of ourselves with them," Grunwald remembers. And it still shows, in Grunwald's own writing if not in Time's prose. It's hardly a coincidence that his massive volume is by far the most readable of all those here under review; Grunwald clearly takes great care with his words, expressing himself with an elegant restraint. Katz could learn a thing or two from him. He's a perfectly readable writer, but freed from the discipline inculcated by a careful editor (and, to be fair, writing on daily deadline), he falls into sloppy ways. Like a guitarist whose ten-minute solo has exhausted his attempts at originality, he falls back again and again on a few familiar riffs, a few favorite clichés. In a Wired essay, he declares that Tom Paine's radical values "fit the Net like a glove;" in a Netizen column, he suggests that one writer's critique of elitist media "fits the existing Washington press corps like a glove;" in yet another column, he declares that the word "seduction ... seems to fit Clinton like a ... " well, you know. I'm not quite sure that the fervor about interactivity is justified, either. I have nothing against interactivity, in moderation — after all, e-mail is what makes my job as an out-of-the-office editor possible. And in a few cases, diligent online activists — posting on Usenet and throwing themselves into the thick of discussions in online conferences and mailing lists — have been able to challenge old-media news stories that have gone awry. Even longtime Net users were amazed at how quickly and thoroughly Time Magazine's notorious Cyberporn cover story was discredited on the Net. (And though Time never ran a retraction, it did run a strange little followup story that looked an awfully lot like one.) Katz, like many Wired types, suggests that the Net functions as a virtual "free market of ideas," in which (reversing Gresham's famous law) good ideas drive out bad. On the Net, Katz argued in one Netizen column, "ideas are rarely taken at face value. They are challenged, debated, honed, and tested in the most basic ways. Errors are corrected. Ideas are updated, fleshed out, changed." Well, sometimes. Other times, though, the Net functions as a vastly expanded game of telephone, with ideas, facts and rumors getting even more distorted with each retelling. Did you hear the one about Craig Shergold and his Good Times cookie recipe? Interactivity doesn't automatically lead to accountability. And though I wish certain journalists could be held more accountable for their actions — I have a few things I'd like to say to Cokie Roberts about the way she's running her career, for example — I'm not sure that complete accountability is a good thing. Sometimes a bit of distance, a bit of alienation, is necessary to get the proper perspective on an issue. There is such a thing as being too accessible: a journalist who knows he's going to get a spam-load of e-mail for taking a position unpopular with his readers may well bite his tongue. Writing, when you come right down to it, is a solitary art, as is reading; too much interactivity gets in the way. One can imagine Katz, seeking the ultimate in interactivity, composing his columns in a special Media Rant AOL chat room:
JDKATZ: What might a new code of media ethics stipulate?
BIGKOK: Any ladies here?
HTBUNS: Hey, JD, are you a babe?
JDKATZ: I'm male. To begin with, reporters writers producers critics and columnists
KINSLY: WIRED SUCKS DOODS!!!111 SLATe ROKs!!!!!!!
NITPIK: hey katz, you forgot to punctuate, doncha know what a comma is?
JDKATZ: Look, I know what a comma is, you dumb fuck. Do you know how to work a shift key?
GUIDE478: JDKATZ, obscene language is a violation of AOL's Terms of Service. Please review the rules at KEYWORD TOS.
Katz and Hale's call for way new journalism is stirring, but the reality is more pedestrian. Sure, there's a need for the wild, unvarnished prose they champion. If the Web succeeds in producing writers who "jack us into the soul of a new society," or failing that somewhat vague objective, simply creates writers who use language in new and unaccustomed ways, more power to it.
But most new media, in practice, looks much more like the old media than one might think. Don't think Netizen; think c|net. And this isn't all bad. Most journalism, after all, is by definition a fairly dull affair of facts and figures. I can't imagine writers for the new Wired News service are encouraged to "have fun with facts," or to pepper their dispatches with the obscenity du jour.
Those writers who rise above mere journalism will by and large have to figure out their own style, and their own ethics, for themselves — and the technology they use will have little to do with it. Some may find themselves inspired by Katz and Hale's Cult of the First Draft. Me, I'll be looking for the next Joan Didion. And I won't care if she's got an e-mail address or not.
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