Remembering Uncle Walter

He may have retired as the anchor of the CBS Evening News when I was only 10, but I can still vividly remember Walter Cronkite delivering that day's news in my living room. It was on a television that only got seven or eight channels, had a dial that I was frequently chastised for flipping too vigorously, and had a set of floppy rabbit ear antennas, but for that half hour, it had my parents' attention.

I suppose I never paid much attention to the news back then, but somehow the warm, genial delivery of "Uncle Walter" stuck with me, because he was always held up as the gold standard of television news throughout my entire college career. My broadcasting and production professors always stressed his most under-recognized, yet most valuable talent: his writing. By starting as a newspaper reporter, he always knew how to find stories, but more importantly, how to convey information clearly and concisely to his audience.

With the plethora of celebrity deaths in recent weeks, the passing of Walter Cronkite is the most meaningful for me. Robert Lloyd, the television critic of the Los Angeles Times, summed up the impact of his passing best: "There are many more rooms in the mansion that is television news nowadays, but they have grown proportionately smaller; they are no longer fit for giants."

And Walter Cronkite was the last of the giants.