Cronkite's First Sign-Off Was Shout-out to Newspapers

By: E&P Staff Who knows how Walter Cronkite might have influenced the future of newspapers if his bosses had let him keep his first sign-off -- a salute to the depth of newspaper coverage?

Over the weekend, CNN's Tom Watkins reported that Cronkite, who died Friday at age 92, didn't end his first broadcast as CBS News with just the simple "that's the way it is" sign-off that became his trademark.

"The first night up, 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,'" Sanford "Sandy" Socolow, who worked at CBS News for 32 years, told CNN.

That didn't sit well with Cronkite's bosses, Socolow added: "The suits -- as we used to call them -- went crazy. From their perspective, Cronkite was sending people to read newspapers instead of watching the news. There was a storm."

Cronkite changed the sign-off after an apparently stormy meeting with CBS News President Richard Salant, Socolow said. But even "that's the way it is" was not a popular choice, he added.

"Salant's attitude," Socolow said, "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.'"