Walter Cronkite, the iconic journalist who hosted the evening news for the top-rated television network from 1962 to 1981, is dead.
There were few people more famous. People called Cronkite “the most trusted man in America,” and he never gave me cause to dispute that.
I came to adore Cronkite. He went to the University of Texas at Austin, as Harry and Jay Knowles did, and worked on its newspaper, The Daily Texan, as I did, so I always felt that connection with him.
He was also kind of a space nut, as a lot of us are, and his coverage of the NASA launches before, during and after the moonshots always endeared him to geeks around the world.
In his later years he’d help with CBS’ election coverage or MTV would trot him out on occasion for some insight, and I was always struck by how much smarter and more "on the ball" he seemed than guys like Frank Reynolds and Barbara Walters and Dan Rather and Brit Hume, the lesser minds who continued overseeing broadcast news after Cronkite retired.
Find CBS News' obituary here.
