The Art of the Interview

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Mike Wallace died yesterday.

He was 93 years old so his death, while sad for his survivors, cannot be considered either unexpected or tragic. But his loss is considerable for anyone who appreciates the art of the interview.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Wallace interviewed just about everybody who was anybody — presidents, kings, newsmakers of all kinds. I suppose most of his interviews were conducted in his work for CBS' 60 Minutes. He did some interviewing as a staffer for the University of Michigan's student newspaper, but a lot of the work he did in his youth would be better classified as entertainment.

He did some announcing, even some acting, on radio in the 1940s and hosted some game shows in the 1950s. The latter is not as unusual as it might seem today. In those days, newscasters, as they were called, did it all. In addition to announcing, they did commercials and hosted game shows.

And that generated most of Wallace's income for awhile.

But it was his interview work in the late 1950s and early 1960s that led to his job with 60 Minutes.

In that capacity, he really did interview just about everyone, all the movers and shakers of the late 20th century, but he did say about six years ago that he regretted the one that got away — former first lady Pat Nixon.

I have conducted many interviews in my life, and I can assure anyone who has never done one that it is much more difficult than it may appear. Most people who get interviewed tend to feel that they are somehow doing the interviewer a huge favor by sitting down and answering a few questions, which really puts the interviewer at a disadvantage.

There are some interview subjects who do not think that they are above the likes of any interviewer, but they are rare (and, my experience is, the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they will feel this way).

I've seen more than one interviewer come away with a poor interview because the subject seized the psychological high ground. It takes someone with confidence in himself and the validity of his questions to walk into an interview setting and treat his subjects as equals — and be treated as an equal in return. That was the amazing thing about Mike Wallace.

I share little tricks with my students, and I hope those tricks will help them conduct better interviews, but I often wonder if being a great interviewer isn't one of those things one is born with, sort of like when Stan Musial was hired to coach batting.

Musial was one of the greatest hitters ever to play baseball, but no one, not even Musial himself, could teach his unorthodox batting stance to others. It worked for him. It didn't work for anyone else.

Similarly, I wouldn't encourage young reporters to emulate Wallace — except, perhaps, to study the kinds of questions he asked. He always tried to develop a rapport with his interviewees, but he was tough, and he got right to the point. Sometimes it got him in trouble. Most of the time, it got him great stories.

Broadcasting isn't what it used to be. Wallace's death is a reminder that the practitioners of high–quality broadcasting are just about gone now.

"There simply hasn't been another broadcast journalist with that much talent," said 60 Minutes' executive producer Jeff Fager. That's pretty high praise coming from the chairman of CBS News, a network news division that has been graced by the presence of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr — and many, many more.

Rest in peace, Mike Wallace.

The Vanishing Newsmen

So far this year, we've lost two of the greats from broadcast journalism when I was growing up — Irving R. Levine in March and now Walter Cronkite.

When Levine died, I noted that "He was finicky about his sign–off." That was a reference to his insistence upon including his middle initial when he completed a report, saying "This is Irving R. Levine." The folks at NBC asked him if he would mind dropping that middle initial. They wanted to save a little time. Levine replied that he would rather leave out the B in NBC.

I guess being finicky about sign–offs was a trait among the old school broadcasters because, apparently, Cronkite had some problems with his sign–off.

At least, that is what Tom Watkins is reporting at CNN.com.

Today, the day after Cronkite's death, his memorable sign–off, "And that's the way it is," is being remembered as classic. But it didn't get off to a great start, Watkins writes.

Sandy Socolow, who was Cronkite's producer for four years, told Watkins the story.

On Cronkite's first night as CBS' anchorman, Socolow said, "he ended the show by saying, I'm paraphrasing, 'That's the news. Be sure to check your local newspapers tomorrow to get all the details on the headlines we are delivering to you.'

"The suits," Socolow said, "went crazy. From their perspective, Cronkite was sending people to read newspapers instead of watching the news."

So Cronkite changed his sign–off.

"In the absence of anything else, he came up with 'That's the way it is,' " Socolow said.

But that, too, caused some problems for Cronkite.

"(CBS News President Richard) Salant's attitude was, 'We're not telling them that's the way it is. We can't do that in 15 minutes,' which was the length of the show in those days. 'That's not the way it is.' "

But Cronkite wasn't going to come up with a third sign–off so he kept the one that is now being regarded as iconic.

Those old school broadcasters had their standards.

Walter Cronkite Dies

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It's almost impossible for me to describe my feelings upon hearing today that Walter Cronkite has died of cerebrovascular disease.

He was known as the "most trusted man in America." To many Americans, he was "Uncle Walter," as trustworthy and dependable as the sunrise.

He lived a long life. He was, after all, 92 years old at the time of his death.

And, from 1962 to 1981, no one else was as widely trusted to give it to you straight. He was, as Douglas Martin of the New York Times writes, "a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one."

I can remember, vividly, the night of Cronkite's last news show on March 6, 1981. I don't remember anything special about the news that day, just that it was Cronkite's last newscast. Who would have thought he'd live for another 28 years?

(Well, perhaps his mother, who was nearly 90 when her son retired and died at the age of 101.)

Actually, it was kind of ironic that Cronkite, who brought the news of all the major events of the 1960s and 1970s into America's living rooms, retired when he did. If he had waited a month, he could have anchored the news reports of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.

As he said goodbye to his audience, he said it was merely the "passing of the baton." The anchorman, he told his viewers, was just the "most conspicuous member of a superb team" and, borrowing a famous line, pledged to return — and he did, in frequent news specials and documentaries.

No one who is old enough to remember Cronkite's newscasts and his signature line, "And that's the way it is," will ever forget the influence he had.

Personally, I am always reminded of a couple of things when I think of Cronkite. Actually, I remember a lot of things. But these two stories are worth repeating on this occasion.

• In the 1950s, Cronkite was the host of the CBS morning news show for awhile, but he had a bit of a falling–out with its sponsor, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
  
  You may or may not be old enough to remember cigarette commercials on TV, but the Reynolds company had a slogan for its Winston cigarettes that went "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." Cronkite, who had a dedication to grammar that perhaps only a former copy editor can appreciate, corrected the grammar, observing that it should be "Winston tastes good as a cigarette should."


• In the 1970s, Cronkite made a guest appearance on one of the most popular TV programs of the decade, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
  
  In the episode, Cronkite was visiting Lou Grant. Pompous local anchorman Ted Baxter had just won his first award (after lobbying for it) and tried to hit up Cronkite for a job with CBS. Somehow, Ted managed to get an arm around Cronkite's shoulder and was auditioning for a role on the evening news giving sports scores, saying lines like "In hockey, the North Stars 3, the Kings Oh!" Then he tried to engage in a conversation with Cronkite: "So, Walt, let's talk shop. Which words do you have trouble pronouncing?"
  
  Cronkite turned his head, glared at Lou and said, "I'm gonna get you for this!"

On this day that Cronkite died, I figured somebody ought to mention those two stories.

I'm sure that somewhere someone has already concluded the newscast by saying, "And that's the way it is." It wouldn't be terribly original to say that.

So rest in peace, Uncle Walter.

An Exaggerated Report

Mark Twain is one of my favorite writers of all time. And one of my favorite quotations by him apparently stemmed from reports about a serious illness with which his cousin was afflicted. Somehow, word got out that Twain was the one who was ill — and, from that, things got out of hand. Twain, subsequent reports indicated, had passed away.

But that was not the case. So Twain attempted to set the record straight.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," he famously said.

I'm getting somewhat the same sensation today with the reports concerning retired news anchor Walter Cronkite.

The 92–year–old Cronkite has been ill recently, but Mark Shanahan reports, in the Boston Globe, that he isn't at death's door — at least, not yet.

Even the Chicago Sun–Times, while hedging its bets with a headline that said "Reports of Walter Cronkite's illness are exaggerated," nevertheless informed readers that Cronkite was "gravely ill" a couple of paragraphs before reporting that Cronkite's executive assistant said he was "dealing with the challenges of being a 92–year–old man."

And that tends to put things in a somewhat different light.

Unless you're over 35, you may not remember Cronkite. He was a fixture in the evening TV news broadcasts, often considered "the most trusted man in America" and known by many viewers as simply "Uncle Walter."

For nearly 20 years, until his retirement in 1981, Cronkite was the anchor at CBS, presiding over the network's coverage of the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the landing on the moon of Apollo 11 and the Watergate scandal — as well as practically all the other major events of the 1960s and 1970s, like Woodstock and Watts, Three–Mile Island and Kent State.

His on–air editorial in 1968 stating that the war in Vietnam was not winnable is often credited with being the event that turned the tide of public opinion. President Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from the presidential race a month later, reportedly said, after Cronkite's editorial, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Well, America hasn't lost Cronkite yet — and it may not lose him for several more years. His mother was 101 when she died in 1993. Cronkite was 77 at that time.

By the way, in case you're wondering, it's my understanding that Twain's cousin recovered from whatever had afflicted him.