Appreciating The Don
Everything being said today and written today to mark the passing of Don Hewitt is 100% true. Inventor of much of television news as we know it today, no doubt. Father of the many of the forms of broadcast news as we know it today, no doubt.
But almost all of what is being said and written today is in the kinds of generalities minus specifics that Don as a preeminent producer would have hated. Where are the facts he would have asked? Where are the guts of it he would have demanded. To get at that on this somber day I offer up something I knocked out five years ago for a print publication no longer printing as Don was stepping away from 60 Minutes. If I wrote it from scratch on this day, I wouldn't change a word.
Here's a little secret. Before 60 Minutes, there was Don Hewitt. Between those grainy old black and white pictures of that young producer with Edward R. Murrow and the sharply colored ones of the Master of the Magazine with his "Minutes Family," Don Hewitt was hard at work.
And what was he doing? Not much beyond inventing television news as we have come to know it. He was Roone Arledge before there was Roone Arledge.
Back in the days when television was in black and white, Hewitt was creating and producing the world's first taste of "news at the dinner hour." It was "Douglas Edwards with The News" then and it was the way that that part of America that owned television sets in the late 1950s and early 1960s was beginning to get its news. Rough around the edges and only as current as the wire services could allow it to be, it was however the birthplace of what we now know as the home of Tom (soon to be Brian), Dan and Peter. "Switching" to Chicago for a weather report from PJ Hoff was magic. Getting the stock prices up on a day when trading hit an incredible 5,000,000 shares was as well.
What Hewitt knew then was that people needed to know and to help them you had to experiment within the confines of the rudimentary technology we had back in the day. When that technology wouldn't do the job, you had to invent something new.
Case in point: Charles Kuralt in Viet Nam. One day the shipment of film brought a brilliantly written Kuralt narrative on American troops struggling and fighting in the jungle. That was on one piece of film and by itself it was powerful stuff. But Kuralt's cameraman had also shot vivid pictures of the action Kuralt was describing. The only problem was, there was up to that point no way to broadcast both at the same time. It was Kuralt or the pictures but not both.
Unacceptable was Hewitt's view of it. I probably could put that in quotes with an exclamation point but at this remove I can't remember hearing him say it but know he did. So what did he do? Invented what became known as "the two chain piece." Kuralt's on camera narration on one and all those dramatic pictures on the other with the director going back and forth between the two.
Simple, right? Not then but what it was was the birth of "the living room war," and afterward reporting on television changed for ever. Words and pictures had been married and the power was stunning.
After Douglas Edwards and what was arguably a true "15 Minutes of Fame," came the half-hour evening news and Walter Cronkite and both bore the stamp of Hewitt's creative genius.
But wait, there is more.
Big event television news? Hewitt birthed it. The anchor on location for the big story? Hewitt birthed that too. Alan Shepard became America's first man in space and there was Walter Cronkite not in a distant studio but at Cape Canaveral broadcasting from the back of an air conditioned station wagon — the first anchor booth — because Hewitt believed that was the only way to do it. And it stayed that way.
And then there was the "big get." Hewitt pioneered that too. Or at least the concept.
Nikita Khrushchev was in the United States. Detente was trying to happen and the jolly Soviet leader was seeing America, including a stop on an Iowa farm. What Hewitt wanted was the first interview and to that end, he dressed himself as a farmer and tried to blend to the point where he could get close enough to put the arm on Nikita.
He got caught and the interview never happened, but the attempt made the point. Do whatever to get the "get." And that hasn't stopped since.
He had by the end of the '60s done it all and what he needed was a new playground — and a new form. That is when Don Hewitt as most of you know him became Don Hewitt. He took acerbic Mike Wallace, folksy and human Harry Reasoner, an olio of producers (this writer included), a simple set and a stopwatch and he created "60 Minutes." And once again television was on the road to never being the same again.
So, legacies for The Don? Far more than just "60 Minutes" but perhaps the most memorable will be the sound of that stopwatch that identifies television in a way that no other sound beyond perhaps the NBC "chimes" does.
After that piece was published in 2004, Don called me.
"Jeez, "he said" that was a really nice but I don't deserve all of that."
Yes, I told him, you do and you still do.
RIP.
Jeff Gralnick has been in broadcasting for 50 years, working for CBS News, ABC News, NBC News. During that time he says he was lucky enough to work and learn from the best in the busy among whom he numbers Don Hewitt.
Steven Weber: Don Hewitt and the Art of Truth
In 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt created a salon for the nation, an oasis in the midst of a saccharine, pop culture desert. It is one hour of much needed sophistication, every week.
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The "Big Get" Don didn't get:
While I was in occupied east Jerusalem, on March 26, 2006, the Whistler Blower of Israel's WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu whose FREEDOM of SPEECH trial had just begun told me:
“Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no...CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can't do it because they don't want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing.
"Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis."
When I returned to the USA, I mailed "60 Minutes" a DVD copy of my "30 Minutes with Vanunu" but I never received a reply.
"30 Minutes with Vanunu" taped in 2006 and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" taped in 2008 along with text reports of the first FREEDOM of SPEECH trial in the 'democracy' of Israel can be gotten at VANUNU ARCHIVES: http://www
I realize that Hewitt was important to you but boy am I tired of hearing about him. The media decides who we have to hear about. Hewitt was important to media insiders - not to the 100s of millions of us outsiders.
"Hewitt was important to media insiders - not to the 100s of millions of us outsiders.
I remember the early days of '60 Minutes' when journalism was at its best - the 4th estate bringing truth to power. When corrupt business leaders and legislators were exposed for their dirty dealings that brought harm to american people. Where is the truth to power - now the faux news people are in bed with the corrupt leaders and legislators reporting 'he said, she said' yellow journalism. The dumbing down of the news started in the early 1980s and culimated w the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1988 and Telecommunications Act of 1998.
I am sure Mr Hewitt, as well as Mr Ted Turner, cried many tears to see their babies evolve into this embarrassing 24/7 gobbleguck that we see today. RIP, Mr. Hewitt.
And then there are "news people" like the late Novack, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, . . . who care little for the facts, whose sole innovation consists of developing an gullible audience easily misdirected and who are paid more money in a year than Hewitt was probably paid for producing in his lifetime.
entertainers usually get paid more than journalist
For what it's worth, I worked with an organization that was profiled on 60 Minutes many years ago. I no longer work for them and don't have any particular loyalty to them anymore. But I recall being quite unhappy with a story that 60 Minutes did on us since it cherry-picked facts in order to fit a narrative that would please an audience. We wrote a letter to CBS to let them know how offended we were and pointing out errors, and received a letter back from Don Hewitt saying they stood by their story. That was the first time I knew who Don Hewitt was.
Some years later, I saw "The Insider", in which Hewitt was portrayed unfavorably. I was amused to read that Hewitt felt he had not been treated fairly.
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