Don Hewitt: 1922-2009

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Don Hewitt was a legend of television news in 1968 when he created and began producing “60 Minutes.” This show set a viewership record that will likely remain unmatched: For 23 years in a row, beginning in 1978, the CBS show was a top-10 hit. In five of those years it was ranked No. 1.

A CBS story memorializing Hewitt following his death Wednesday at age 86 mentioned that astounding performance. It recounted how Hewitt would often answer when reporters asked him what the secret was to the success “60 Minutes” was having worldwide:

“It’s four words every child knows,” Hewitt would say. “Tell me a story.”

Hewitt died of pancreatic cancer while surrounded by family members at his home in tiny Bridgehampton, N.Y., a hamlet on Long Island.

His passing in such a quiet surrounding was contrary to his fast-paced career in journalism. He started as a print reporter and became a pioneer — along with Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow — in television news.

Hewitt’s work placed him at the reportorial forefront of the biggest and most competitive stories of his time. It was Hewitt, for example, who produced and directed the 1960 presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon — a broadcast that transformed television into the most powerful medium for political coverage.

That historic debate occurred 12 years after network television, and Hewitt, entered the news business. Hewitt directed the first television news broadcast on May 3, 1948. Many broadcast news techniques developed by Hewitt in those early days of television are still used today.

What immediately stood out about “60 Minutes,” which Hewitt led for 35 years, was its hard-hitting journalism, which often rooted out political corruption, miscarriages of justice and corporate dishonesty. Its softer news stories, such as interviews with famous people, were pleasant diversions. This formula, copied by networks all over the world, originated with Hewitt.

Jeff Fager, current executive producer of “60 Minutes,” accurately summarized Hewitt’s legacy when he said the newsman was “an irrepressible force who changed journalism forever.”