Free Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley Page B

written by Betsy:
    Cronkite : “Hello, Angel. What heaven did you drop from?”
    Maxwell : “I’m not an angel.”
    Cronkite : “Well you look like an angel.”
    Maxwell : “That’s because I use Richard Hudnut.”
    By the beginning of 1937, Betsy had found a new job, writing features for the women’s page at the Kansas City Journal-Post , a lot of local-color copy on quilting bees and library functions. The paper was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, but Betsy was pleased to be a “woman’s section” writer. Before long she was assigned to write the “advice to the lovelorn” column. The future Mrs. Cronkite joked that she wasn’t old enough to read some of the rather revealing letters sent into the paper, let alone to provide counsel on the problems. Betsy kept dating Walter, who was irresistibly attractive, but not handsome. “He used to be such a string bean,” she recalled of their courting days, “that my mother insisted on having us over for dinner all the time to fatten him up. Also, for many years he wore his hair slicked back, as was the fashion—but it wasn’t extremely flattering.”
    While Cronkite’s love life was on the upswing, his professional life hit a roadblock. One day the wife of his boss, Jim Simmons, called the station to report that three firemen had been killed in a blaze in her neighborhood. Simmons rushed to Cronkite’s desk, saying, “Get on the air with a flash! The new city hall is on fire, and three firemen just jumped to their deaths!” Cronkite, full of protestations and litanies, insisted on checking the facts himself with the fire department by telephone.
    “You don’t have to check on it,” Simmons snapped at Cronkite. “My wife called and told me.”
    “I do too have to check on it,” Cronkite said, remembering the fundamentals of journalism instilled in him at San Jacinto High, The Houston Press , and INS.
    “Are you calling my wife a liar?” a ticked-off Simmons asked the young Lone Star hotshot.
    “No,” Cronkite said, evoking the Standard Model of Professional Journalism. “I’m not calling your wife a liar, but I don’t know the details.”
    Simmons was now livid. “I’ve told you the details. The new city hall building’s on fire, and three firemen have jumped.”
    With Cronkite resolutely refusing to go on air, Simmons, in a temperamental snit, headed to the microphone himself. Playing the fool, he went on the KCMO airwaves ad-libbing a breaking news bulletin about the supposedly burned firemen. Cronkite’s sleuthing subsequently proved that the fire had been minor. There were no deaths. Nevertheless, the next day, Cronkite was summarily fired by the ego-bruised Simmons. Cronkite felt betrayed, clubbed over the head with the farce. “They felt,” Cronkite recalled, “that I was getting a little bit too big for my britches.”
    This unsettling fire incident might have precipitated the split with KCMO, but it probably wasn’t the only source of friction. Once the glamour of radio wore off—such as it was at a weak, 100-watt midwestern station—Cronkite began to chafe at the shallow radio version of events that passed for news. Even though he was unsure how his bills would get paid, he was relieved to be out of KCMO, uncontaminated by Simmons. With a snort of contempt, he remained proud of getting fired for refusing to go live without first triple-sourcing for confirmation of the fire’s reality. And he got the last laugh. When Cronkite died in 2009, one blog told the story of how KCMO canned, for being ethical, the broadcaster who became the Most Trusted Man in America. The headline of the post was “KCMO: Stupid Enough to Fire Cronkite, Downhill Ever Since.”

C HAPTER F OUR
    Making of a Unipresser
    UP TRADITION—NEWS AS COMMODITY—MISSOURI METHOD OF JOURNALISM—THE WELL-PRESSED JOHN CAMERON SWAYZE—TEXAS SCHOOL EXPLOSION—PHONE BOOTH REPORTING FOR CBS—ACTION ADDICT—WKY SOONERS SPORTSCASTER—LEARNING TO AD-LIB—FLYING LOW