Maggie Shnayerson

Fact: Regardless of your stance on Katie Couric, she’s just now been illustrating, while speaking to CNN’s John King, exactly how much we’ve lost since Cronkite and Murrow had the care of the public’s airwaves. Emphases all hers.

“Apparently, before the era of teleprompters, John, he would write a few notes on file cards, just glance at them, know what the story was, and speak extemporaneously to the audience. You can’t find many anchors who are really capable of pulling that off in this day and age.”

Sigh.

“I was talking to Douglas Brinkley, John, earlier today, and he’s writing a biography about Walter—the University of Texas is a repository of all his papers—and apparently he was a packrat. [Brinkley] has boxes and boxes, and he has the reporter’s notebooks from when [Cronkite] was in Vietnam.”

Well Christ, Katie, whatever do you do with your reporter’s notebooks? Oh. Dear me. Sorry, I can see why such a habit might bewilder.

Forgive my mislaid bitterness—it’s really all meant for Don Hewitt, Katie. [Via inothernews]

The only thing to say about this is that it’s really sad and I was a fan. Maybe tomorrow I’ll affectionately tease the memory of NBC political analyst, bureau chief and Meet the Press host Tim Russert with something about that ridiculous 8×10 white board he sported during the 2000 election. Maybe not. Now brace yourselves for the slew of speculative pieces in the coming days over which heir apparent will, ought, won’t, should, deserves, has been groomed, and so on to fill that Sunday morning chair. You know Katie Couric’s agent has already made a few calls.