The News Sorority

by Sheila Weller

  * Katie personally asked Cronkite “to do the opening ‘announce’ on the broadcast, which he did for no money,” says Sandy Socolow. “About six months after Cronkite died, they took Walter’s voice off and they had Morgan Freeman doing it. I realized: They must [have been] paying Morgan Freeman—he’s not doing it for free.” The difference between the iconic news anchor’s volunteered work and the actor’s presumedly paid work was quietly revelatory to Socolow, indicating how the TV news business had changed from public service to commercial enterprise.

  * As CBS Evening News’s managing editor as well as anchor, Katie was entitled to tell the bureau chiefs, via a representative in a daily conference call, what news stories she wanted covered on any given night. But one of the participants on those calls, a woman, says that, conveyed in the daily calls from the New York producers, there had always been “lots of ‘Walter wants’”—a special news story Cronkite wanted covered—as well as “‘Dan wants.’ But there were very few ‘Katie wants.’”

  * In addition to winning a string of DuPont, Peabody, Emmy, and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism awards for her long body of work, Diane received the USC Distinguished Achievement in Journalism Award, was inducted into the Broadcast Magazine Hall of Fame and the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and received the IRTS Lifetime Achievement Award, which is considered the grand prize of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Association.