Credit: The Moderate Voice

“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story,” that’s one of the many famous quotes uttered by the “trusted man in America.” Walter Cronkite kept a nation calm through war, assassinations, presidential scandals, an impeachment, the Moon Landing, the release of American hostages during the Iranian Revolution, among other significant events in history during his 31-year career with CBS.

Columbia University Journalism Professor Todd Gitlin, who is also a sociologist, said it best:  “He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread. Cronkite mastered enunciation, training himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute so his viewers could understand him. (On average, we speak at between 165 and 200 words per minute.) He remained steady while the message he gave was “that things are falling apart.” Truly, he was the one of those journalists that shaped the medium we know today as broadcast news. 

The buzz in print, TV, and cyberspace is that journalism has not and won’t ever be the same without him. Read the rest of this entry »