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Only weeks after losing another titan of televised news, Walter Cronkite, the man who gave us 60 Minutes (and all the TV newsmagazines which followed) is gone. Don Hewitt, creator and longtime (for nearly four decades!) producer of CBS News' Sunday-evening institution and director of the very first network TV newscast, has died of brain cancer in New York, NY at 86. The Atlantic magazine has a tribute to him here.
Hewitt was the one who, back in 1968. first conceived of a TV news show that would be the broadcast equivalent of Life magazine, another dearly missed journalistic icon then still in circulation. He created the format and set the pattern all the other networks (and later, cable channels) would follow. Because of him, generations of elected officials and business moguls have had to subject their considered actions to "the 60 Minutes test": Would you want Mike Wallace and a camera crew to show up on your doorstep with pointed questions about this? (The New York Times' front page offers a similar test: would you want it appearing there?) How many evils this prospect prevented—and how many others the investigations of Wallace and his confréres Morley Safer, the late Ed Bradley and Harry Reasoner, Lesley Stahl and Steve Krofft exposed under Hewitt's guiding hand—are probably beyond human reckoning.
My heart goes out to his family, friends and professional associates in this most difficult hour. Farewell, sir, and thank you—not merely for decades of hard-hitting journalism, but for a genuine and massive public service.
Hewitt was the one who, back in 1968. first conceived of a TV news show that would be the broadcast equivalent of Life magazine, another dearly missed journalistic icon then still in circulation. He created the format and set the pattern all the other networks (and later, cable channels) would follow. Because of him, generations of elected officials and business moguls have had to subject their considered actions to "the 60 Minutes test": Would you want Mike Wallace and a camera crew to show up on your doorstep with pointed questions about this? (The New York Times' front page offers a similar test: would you want it appearing there?) How many evils this prospect prevented—and how many others the investigations of Wallace and his confréres Morley Safer, the late Ed Bradley and Harry Reasoner, Lesley Stahl and Steve Krofft exposed under Hewitt's guiding hand—are probably beyond human reckoning.
My heart goes out to his family, friends and professional associates in this most difficult hour. Farewell, sir, and thank you—not merely for decades of hard-hitting journalism, but for a genuine and massive public service.
