Cronkite’s enduring contributions

Tributes to Walter Cronkite will pour in throughout the weekend. It’s doubtful there will ever be anyone like Cronkite again — especially considering that broadcast television news is unlikely to ever again command the kind of audiences Cronkite did at the apex of his career, when 20 million Americans watched the “CBS Evening News.” He anchored that broadcast from 1962-81 and became the most trusted man in America, according to a poll in the early 1970s. Cronkite was the consummate newsman, rising to the anchor’s chair after starting as a wire-service reporter. With his passing it’ll be interesting to see new analysis of his career, which included a number of seminal moments — like his 1968 commentary during one broadcast that basically declared the Vietnam War unwinnable and helped President Lyndon Johnson decide not to run for re-election. If Cronkite wasn’t the original synthesizer of fact and analysis on TV, he probably did more than anyone else to legitimize it.

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