Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley Page A
Authors: Douglas Brinkley
Tags: United States, General, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, Biography, Television Journalists, Television Journalists - United States, Cronkite; Walter, Editors; Journalists; Publishers.; Bisacsh
Ads: Link
was a bit of a ham, a jocular egotist wanting to please and show off in front of adoring crowds. Unfortunately, people simply didn’t see Cronkite as he saw himself. While he aspired to be the leading man in a UT Curtain Club production, he was instead cast as the stodgy, middle-aged university president born into squarely bourgeois circumstances. Cronkite considered himself a colorful card, even dashing; other people thought of him as the embodiment of Mr. Beige. During the play rehearsals that went on from 7:00 p.m. to midnight, Cronkite learned that to his peers he was a rather muted and mundane classmate.
What Cronkite came to understand, even in the improvident rush of those college days, was that he’d never become a Broadway or Hollywood star. He tacitly abandoned the stage in favor of a communications field in which everyone was then an adventurer. Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Great Depression, with live programming on local stations all through the day. Stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy for prayers and pundits on world affairs. Each local U.S. radio station created a carnival in its studio. The four preeminent radio networks—CBS, Mutual, NBC Blue, and NBC Red—provided regional or national programming in the evenings. Cronkite’s best asset in 1934 was a budding reputation as something of an authority on sports—a boon in tackle-hard Texas. Years later he recalled that he failed his freshman engineering class at UT in part because he couldn’t fathom the workings of a pulley. Yet he had a steel-trap memory for football rosters, baseball box scores, and horse racing numbers.
Scrambling for cash to stay afloat on his own in 1935, Cronkite was hired by KNOW, a major AM radio station in Austin, as “the man who gets behind the campus news.” It was a heady prospect, since he would be not merely a reporter but the “talent”—earning a dollar a day. The fact that Cronkite landed the job at KNOW, whose studio was in an alley behind Sixth Street, without any real radio experience indicated that he could sell himself. Later, the station asked him to write and read a sports report every Tuesday and Friday at 5:15 p.m. As an added perk he got to drink free 3.2 percent beer. In his memoir, A Reporter’s Life , Cronkite writes eloquently of how incredible it was to be alive in the “crystal days” of radio reading the Western Union baseball score ticker. “One could tell a wireless faddist,” Cronkite recalled. “He or she was the one whose eyes were rimmed with dark circles from having stayed up all night when reception was best, bringing in distant stations.”
At KNOW, Cronkite was shackled by the same conundrum that faced all radio at the time: corroborating facts was difficult. His boss, Harfield Weedin—later to become the general manager of Lady Bird Johnson’s Austin radio station, KTBC, and then West Coast head of CBS Radio—warned Cronkite of misusing the airwaves with erroneous babble. Nevertheless, Cronkite was expected to read aloud sports scores with flare even though he didn’t have the actual play-by-play color at his disposal. Because the wire services wouldn’t pay for access to these game results, Cronkite had to be cunning and resourceful. A local Austin tobacconist, who encouraged patrons to linger in the shop and smoke, paid for a ticker service to provide up-to-date box scores, and Cronkite furtively looked at the ticker and memorized the teams, the scores, and the highlights for his broadcasts later. His modus operandi for collecting sports stories had its banana republic side, but it worked. Later in the year, the CBS network would form its own news service, organizing news sources, reporters, and stringers around the country. Radio news gathering was getting streamlined.
In the spring semester of 1935, after two years at the University of Texas, Cronkite dropped out. At the
What Cronkite came to understand, even in the improvident rush of those college days, was that he’d never become a Broadway or Hollywood star. He tacitly abandoned the stage in favor of a communications field in which everyone was then an adventurer. Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Great Depression, with live programming on local stations all through the day. Stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy for prayers and pundits on world affairs. Each local U.S. radio station created a carnival in its studio. The four preeminent radio networks—CBS, Mutual, NBC Blue, and NBC Red—provided regional or national programming in the evenings. Cronkite’s best asset in 1934 was a budding reputation as something of an authority on sports—a boon in tackle-hard Texas. Years later he recalled that he failed his freshman engineering class at UT in part because he couldn’t fathom the workings of a pulley. Yet he had a steel-trap memory for football rosters, baseball box scores, and horse racing numbers.
Scrambling for cash to stay afloat on his own in 1935, Cronkite was hired by KNOW, a major AM radio station in Austin, as “the man who gets behind the campus news.” It was a heady prospect, since he would be not merely a reporter but the “talent”—earning a dollar a day. The fact that Cronkite landed the job at KNOW, whose studio was in an alley behind Sixth Street, without any real radio experience indicated that he could sell himself. Later, the station asked him to write and read a sports report every Tuesday and Friday at 5:15 p.m. As an added perk he got to drink free 3.2 percent beer. In his memoir, A Reporter’s Life , Cronkite writes eloquently of how incredible it was to be alive in the “crystal days” of radio reading the Western Union baseball score ticker. “One could tell a wireless faddist,” Cronkite recalled. “He or she was the one whose eyes were rimmed with dark circles from having stayed up all night when reception was best, bringing in distant stations.”
At KNOW, Cronkite was shackled by the same conundrum that faced all radio at the time: corroborating facts was difficult. His boss, Harfield Weedin—later to become the general manager of Lady Bird Johnson’s Austin radio station, KTBC, and then West Coast head of CBS Radio—warned Cronkite of misusing the airwaves with erroneous babble. Nevertheless, Cronkite was expected to read aloud sports scores with flare even though he didn’t have the actual play-by-play color at his disposal. Because the wire services wouldn’t pay for access to these game results, Cronkite had to be cunning and resourceful. A local Austin tobacconist, who encouraged patrons to linger in the shop and smoke, paid for a ticker service to provide up-to-date box scores, and Cronkite furtively looked at the ticker and memorized the teams, the scores, and the highlights for his broadcasts later. His modus operandi for collecting sports stories had its banana republic side, but it worked. Later in the year, the CBS network would form its own news service, organizing news sources, reporters, and stringers around the country. Radio news gathering was getting streamlined.
In the spring semester of 1935, after two years at the University of Texas, Cronkite dropped out. At the
Similar Books
