Cronkite, Walter

(1916.11.04-    )  Newscaster, anchor CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (1962-1981).

Namesake for & participant in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, Tempe

Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America."

In 1983 the Walter Cronkite Endowment was established at ASU's journalism department when the former CBS managing editor and anchor became an active participant in school activities and permitted the use of his name for the endowment.  In 1984, the endowment trustees recommended that journalism school adopt Cronkite's name.  The journalism department was subsequently elevated to a school, and the Board of Regents approved the name, the "Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication."

In a 2000 interview in the Financial Times Magazine, Cronkite expressed a lack of support for journalism as an undergraduate curriculum.  He never attended a journalism school, having dropped out of the University of Texas after his second year to go to work for the Hearst News Service.  He points to ethics as the most important ingredient in journalism--to be fair and accurate, and to present all sides of an issue.  The technique of how to write or present story comes with a broad education and not necessarily a major in journalism.  �I think it�s a shame," he was quoted as saying, "for people to spend time in journalism courses in their undergraduate years. There�s so little time to get that general, classical education which should occupy students in the first four years; then you can take journalism courses.�  As a result, he would guide the school which bears his name toward post-graduate studies.

And that's the way it is at ASU.