lest anyone make any of these claims, here's my prerebuttal:

1)no, Rather on Maddow doesn't demonstrate he's desperate

2) yes, typewritergate was a bogus scandal

3) no, Cronkite was not a traitor for losing hope on Vietnam

4) "a true journalist must be liberal," to paraphrase his statement, means that reporters whose allegiance is to the people shame reporters who uphold and defend the establishment

I am a leading edge boomer (going on 63), so I came of political age during the 1960's. I would always watch the evening news, and invariably it was the CBS Evening News. Only I didn't say it that way; I always said I was "going to watch Cronkite." He was the "news" as far as I was concerned.

The world is too different, too diffuse for there to be another Walter Cronkite. We can only hope that those who make journalism their profession will strive to reach the heights of professionalism and integrity that he achieved during his long and extraordinary career.

He will be missed.

Even describing MSNBC’s coverage of Walter Cronkite's death, you managed to be a partisan when you said that Dan Rather was “the same, though battered by an unfair right-wing scandal that ended his CBS career.” It was not a “right-wing scandal.”

“CBS News anchor Dan Rather apologized yesterday for a "mistake in judgment" in relying on apparently bogus documents for a "60 Minutes" report charging that President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard, ending a nearly two-week-long defense of the network's journalistic conduct that media analysts say has badly hurt its credibility.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35531-2004Sep20.html

You wrote:

“ I'd love to surface someone with a national news conscience and authority that could focus us on what matters. I'm not sure we completely had that back in Cronkite's day, but I am utterly certain we don't have it right now. What would it take to have the 2009 version of it?”

I think there is no hope for “the 2009 version” of Cronkite. It might be someone from a new generation of journalists who would not be a narrow-minded “liberal” or “conservative,” but an honest and intelligent journalist whom the whole nation would trust and listen to.

No and, ifs or buts about that. I don't know what Dan Rather's involvement was.

But that's why there won't be another Walter Cronkite, because we as a society refuse to face facts, draw distinctions, or come to conclusions. We want to indulge in our own reality whether it's Obama's birth certificate or the CBS letters. In short, we just don't believe 'that's the way it is.'

We were always a CBS household growing up (born in the early 60s), from soaps (I admit it ;)) to news, so growing up with Walter Cronkite giving me the news of the world was how I assumed everyone grew up.

Right after I heard the news about Mr. Cronkite's passing, I blogged my thoughts, and have to say I somewhat surprised myself seeing how often I referenced safety and comfort when talking about him, but of course not surprised at all by mentioning honesty and integrity repeatedly. In reading the thoughts of others throughout this evening, it has done my heart good to see that so many other have used the same, if not similar, wording to describe the effect Mr. Cronkite has had on their lives.

I honestly can't imagine anyone growing up with today's journalists/newscasters feeling about any of them a few decades from now, the way those of us who grew up on Cronkite in the 60s and 70s feel about him. Our country is so divided politically, which in this day and age also equates with divisions among who we choose as our source of news information. Those on the right might feel they have their Cronkite, and perhaps those on the left feel they do, too. But someone that BOTH sides could ever see as "the most trusted (wo)man in America" happening? Nope, I just don't see it. I'm just thankful I grew up in the age of Walter Cronkite. RIP Mr. Cronkite, and thank you, thank you, thank you!

to report the news, the news that gets reported is what maximizes income.

cronkite swallowed the national myths, and was willing to be lied to, like everyone else. if he came to be saddened by watergate and the war in asia, neither he nor any other media figure asked how such things came to pass. he was only disappointed that america's crimes finally became so obvious that they had to be disapproved of.

there will be no more more 'cronkites', because america has finally begun to grasp the character of their masters, and restrict their 'belief in' to the next king, who will not be a liar, a presider over murder teams and torture 'contractors.'

this limited belief is equally barren, as obama supporters are beginning to realize.

Rachel Maddow is the flip side of the Cronkite coin. The fact that she was allowed to "helm" coverage of his death is about all we need to know about just how far downhill the (former) news media have slid since Cronkite's day. I daresay that, unlike you, Uncle Walter wasn't cheering her on from his grave. The man did have standards and integrity was the name of his game.

Bob Somerby's Daily Howler has had quite a lot to say about Maddow's performance pieces and her frequent playing to the new rubes of the "left". Let's just say Somerby doesn't exactly give her rave reviews. Instead, he sees Maddow and her ilk as accelerating a dynamic of deterioration. Cronkite would undoubtedly have seen Maddow in much the same light.

This man was the Vietnam War. He was Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. He was The Way it Is, for my whole childhood. I hope there's a special place in heaven for him, all ready for him to move in.

There are really two questions here. One is whether there will be people reporting the news who have not been airbrushed and focus-grouped to project a lowest-common-denominator happy medium view of the world. I think are and will continue to be real people in the news business with real concern for ethics and professionalism, despite what the mainstream news has come to be.

But the other question is whether there will ever again be one place where all of America watches to learn what's happened in a day. Cronkite was the definitive last word, because he was such a compelling personality, but also because so much of America watched what he had to say that his opinion (conveyed often only through his expression) was a common and unifying experience for Americans.

That's what I don't expect to experience again. We are unlikely ever again to have a single place or person we all turn to each day to learn about and interpret what happened. There are too many places to turn to, and too many seek out the news they agree with, not the reporters they trust. I have to admit I think it's a loss not to have a few touchstones that most Americans witness in common, or opinion leaders we trust because we know their ethics and professionalism is untarnished.