Cronkite 'Spoke for the Nation'

(NEWSER) - Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman who revolutionized television news for a generation, died today at age 92, CBS News reports. He had suffered a long illness and was at home in New York with his family. Cronkite helmed the CBS Evening News throughout the 1960s and '70s, guiding America through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and President Nixon's resignation. “It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” CBS News President Sean McManus told the New York Times. More»

Time for the next generation of media elders to put the national debate on an even keel

(NEWSER) - Elder statesmen of the media like Walter Cronkite and William Safire are dropping at an alarming rate, and their replacements need to step up, writes Peggy Noonan. Ranters on the right and the left—like MSNBC's Ed Schultz, who says Republicans "want to see you dead"—are proliferating, she notes, and cooler heads are urgently needed to steer the national debate away from madness and violence. More»

Anchor has grown into role at CBS, and more are watching

(NEWSER) - Katie Couric’s comforting style is perfect for tough times, or so a 5% uptick in the ratings for CBS’ Evening News suggests. In Couric’s hands, economic catastrophe, Mideast violence and terrorism become “news you can warm up to,” Tom Shales writes in the Washington Post. After the election cycle’s most-hyped Sarah Palin interview, America’s first solo female anchor finally has ammo to hush critics. More»

Woman ordered to pay $2.5M for online defamation

(NEWSER) - In what could end up being very bad news for outspoken bloggers across America, a federal judge has decided that a blogger was not acting as a journalist when she accused an Oregon lawyer of acting unethically and illegally as a trustee in a bankruptcy hearing. The judge denied Crystal Cox's request for legal protections customarily offered to journalists, and a jury subsequently ordered her to pay $2.5 million for defaming lawyer Kevin Padrick and his company. More»

Couric anchors CBS Evening News for last time

(NEWSER) - Katie Couric, the first woman to be solo anchor of an evening network news show, has officially signed off on her 5-year stint at CBS. Couric's final CBS Evening News broadcast included an interview with Hillary Clinton and a "5 years in 5 minutes" retrospective of her time as anchor, Reuters reports. More»