Remembering Walter Cronkite: First Reporting in Sports

Correspondent Written on July 19, 2009

The man, the myth, the legend…of news, Walter Cronkite, died at 92.

Cronkite is most known for his breaking hard news coverage of the Kennedy assassination (the first time Cronkite shed a tear on air) and reporting the announcement of the first man on the moon, but what you may not know is his start in sports.

After dropping out of college in 1935, he started a series of newspapers in the Great Plains reporting local sports coverage and dabbling around the speaker as a sports announcer for WKY (AM) in Oklahoma City and KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Mo.

His broadcast name was Walter Wilcox. As Cronkite said, “Radio stations at the time did not want people to use their names for the fear of taking their listeners with them if they left.”

As his legend continues at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, he inspired all young journalists during his visits and speeches, and will continue to inspire the rest of the journalism world.

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written on July 19, 2009 History