Don Hewitt: 1922-2009

Television journalism has lost another founding father this summer. Just one month after the passing of Walter Cronkite we learn of the fall of another titan, longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt. According to CBS News, he passed away Wednesday of pancreatic cancer with his family at his side.

Hewitt’s resume reads like a one-man broadcast journalism museum. He was personally responsible for producing and directing the first-ever televised presidential debate, the historic Nixon-Kennedy face-off that demonstrated the importance of appearance in elections taking place in the television age. He directed CBS’s first network television newscast, featuring Douglas Edwards, on May 3, 1948, and was the executive producer of the first half-hour network newscast: CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite in 1963. He directed other legends, including Edward R. Murrow, and introduced innovations like cue cards for newscasters, the forefather of the TelePrompTer.

He is perhaps best known for his many years at 60 Minutes, crafting a mold-breaking investigative news program that has stayed at the top of the ratings for decades.

“Don was a giant figure in our lives and will always have an impact on this broadcast — there's a part of him in every one of us, and it affects every decision we make. He will be remembered as a brilliant editor and story teller, an irrepressible force who changed journalism forever,” current 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager, said in a statement on the CBS News website.

Hewitt said the secret to 60 Minutes success is four little words: Tell me a story. And tell a story he did, constantly dispatching correspondents to far-flung locales to interview world leaders, or compelling private citizens, and he had an unmatched flair for making segments as dramatic as they were newsworthy.

"Had he not been a television news producer, I think he would have been a circus ringmaster," CBS news veteran Bob Schieffer told the Associated Press. "Just this great showman. Don Hewitt understood that to tell the news, to get people to understand what they need to know about, you have to get them into the tent."

Hewitt had Americans in his tent for decades and we honor the great newsman who taught nearly everyone in the journalism profession a thing or two.

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