A Tribute to Don Hewitt: October 2009

Good morning, and welcome. To Marilyn and the rest of the family, it is an honor to begin this tribute to the great Don Hewitt. We miss him. He was an extraordinary man with an infectious presence, and I loved being around him. I should admit right from the start that, in the beginning, taking over his job was not very good for our relationship. I understood why. It was his baby, and walking away from it was hard.

But as time went on, that changed. He began stopping by all the time, and he was gracious and supportive. A few Mondays passed before he came in to talk about the broadcast. Don Hewitt had achieved immortality through a life so full and rewarding, and in the end, he knew it.

The last time I saw Don was at Walter Cronkite’s funeral. He did not look very well that day. We were all worried about him. But he was as sharp as ever. After it was over, he looked at me and said, “It could have been half as long.” So, in his honor, we are going to do our best to keep this to 60 Minutes.

It was great to hear him say that about Cronkite’s funeral. Not because he was being irreverent, which he often was. Not because he was editing, which he always was. But because he was being direct, and Don was always direct. That is one of the many Don Hewitt qualities that still live on in the broadcast today. We say what we are thinking. If he ever runs into Walter wherever he is today, he will tell him exactly what he thought of his funeral.

Don Hewitt did not know how to beat around the bush. Whatever he was thinking, you heard it. Sometimes you hear it more than once. His honesty was refreshing. In a world full of uncertainty, Don told it as it was, or at least as he saw it, and you always knew where he stood. He had no patience for phoniness or flowery language. Tell it like it is, or hit the road. And do not let the damn thing run too long, or somebody will get bored. Keep the pace moving and keep it interesting.

I will never forget when he showed me how he built his promos. He hummed them, because to him it was about the pace as much as the words.

“Na na. Na na. Na na na na na. Sunday on 60 Minutes.”

“They’re back, the Nazis. Only this time they’re in Ohio. Sunday on 60 Minutes.”

What Don gave us is almost impossible to measure.

He left us this great broadcast. Think about how many lives have been touched by the thousands of stories that have made an impact over more than 41 years.

And look around this hall. He would have loved this event. He would have loved it even more, as Marilyn said, if we were in the Hollywood Bowl.

But he would have loved seeing all the faces from all the years of 60 Minutes and CBS News, including, I am happy to report, Mike Wallace.

Think about what Don did for us. Think of all the mortgages and tuitions that were paid because of what he created. He was proud of that. He liked to imagine a 60 Minutes where the profits were shared on the floor, and where he would pay the tuition for every child of every employee who worked on the broadcast.

We were like family to him. And nothing felt better than when Don liked your story, or when he called you at home. A few times, he called to tell me how badly I had messed up, and those calls were memorable, too. But most of the time, he called with suggestions for fixing a story, or to say, “You did us proud, kid,” and that felt good.

Here is what Don was not good at. He was not a good manager. And if he did not want to do something, he simply did not do it. Once, when I was running 60 Minutes II, Don and I were called into Andrew Heyward’s office when he was president. There was a problem. We each had a correspondent filming a profile of candidate Al Gore before the primary season. Lesley Stahl was working for 60 Minutes, and Dan Rather was working for 60 Minutes II. It was awkward, and someone was going to have to give it up. For Don, it was simple. “If it is decided at the end of this meeting that Lesley’s not going to get it,” he said, “I ain’t gonna be the one that tells her.”

You always hear a lot about Don the showman, and he was a great showman. But more than that, he was a brilliant editor and storyteller who believed deeply in great journalism. He hated ideology in news, fluff, and the use of audience research to make news decisions.

He was also a great teacher. He learned so much from the giants who taught him. Ed Murrow and his team of gentlemen correspondents were like gods to Don.

He was CBS through and through.

He did not like Fred Friendly very much, and Fred did not like him either. But one of Don’s best qualities was his ability to separate the personal from the professional. He would always call Fred Friendly the best of the best. “Friendly taught me more than anybody ever,” he would say. And Don passed everything he learned from Fred and the rest of them on to us. He connected us to the past, to the great traditions of broadcast journalism at CBS News, with an added touch of his own style and energy.

Don never imagined 60 Minutes would become as successful as it did when he started it. And after it took off, he worried that it could lose its shine. So he lived his life one Sunday at a time. He was quickly bored with last Sunday. It was always about next Sunday. Even when we did well with critics or in the ratings, he would say, “Don’t rest on your laurels.” He said that a lot. That is why he sent my favorite note of his to the staff. I saved it and framed it.

The date was September 1990. The previous spring, we had finished number one in all of television for the entire season. It was a huge achievement. But it scared him, and then he scared us with this:

From: Don Hewitt

To: 60 Minutes producers

Date: September 6, 1990

It’s all well and good to take bows and curtsies for being number one, but unless you get off your backsides and start working harder, we’re going to be lucky to end up number 51.

I’ve got enough blue sheets (story ideas) to cover the Great Wall of China, but blue sheets are not what we put on the air. Among other things, your stories stay in editing twice as long as they should.

It was not unreasonable for me to expect that each producer would have two stories ready to go by the time the new season started. After all, we went into repeats 18 weeks ago. It’s difficult for me to figure out what you (with one of two notable exceptions) were doing since you turned in your last story.

Nowhere in all of journalism are news people as well paid and as loudly applauded as you are. Come on, for Christ’s sake, start turning out stories.

It was pure Don Hewitt. We will miss him very much.