Walter Cronkite, known as the most trusted man in America, was an American journalist who helped launch the CBS Evening News in 1962 and served as its news anchor until his retirement in 1981.
Cronkite was born in 1916 in Missouri and raised in Houston, Texas. After reading a magazine article about a foreign correspondent, he decided to become a journalist. He left the University of Texas to work for the Houston Post in 1935, then for Midwestern radio stations.
In an interview for PBS’s American Masters, Cronkite said,”I think it actually started a way back in all about junior high school days. Maybe or maybe earlier than that in grammar school days. It came in a magazine form. There were a couple of boys’ magazines called American Boy and something else. And they one of them did a series on various vocations, dramatized, of course. But to give young people some idea of what they might want to do in the future. And I was particularly stricken by a report about a foreign correspondent.”
During World War II, Cronkite covered the European front for United Press and served as chief United Press correspondent at the Nuremberg trials.
In 1950, he joined CBS News, worked on a number of programs and covered national political events and elections. Then in 1962, he helped launch the CBS Evening News, which he hosted until 1981.
After retiring, Cronkite hosted Universe, co-produced Why in the World, and hosted Dinosaur. He also wrote several books, including A Reporter’s Life and Around America.
“It was an exciting job. The Press Services, United Press and the Associated Press are servicing newspapers around the world. And as one of our writers once noted, we had a deadline every second around the world, somewhere along the hundreds of newspapers we serve that we always are. We’re on deadline. So there was no excuse for not being on top at every minute. We had to rewrite the stories as the new information became available to a breaking story,” he once said.
In 2009, Cronkite was reported to be ill with cerebrovascular disease. He died at his home in New York that same year, at the age of 92.
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