Tell Me A Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes In Television

Front Cover
PublicAffairs, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 272 pages
Don Hewitt is the most successful producer in the history of television news. In more than a half century with CBS News, he has been responsible for many of the greatest moments in television history, including the first broadcasts of political conventions in 1948; the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960; and, most spectacularly, for the past thirty-two years, 60 Minutes, the news program that has redefined television journalism, for which he has been the creator, executive producer, and driving force.In Tell Me a Story, Hewitt presents his own remarkable life story, from his time as a reporter for Stars & Stripes during World War II, to the heady exhilaration of the early days of television, to the triumphs and controversies of 60 Minutes. Hewitt has been at the center of events, and his book is populated by the leading cultural and political figures of our century -- Charles Lindbergh, Frank Sinatra, William S. Paley, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and many others -- as well as the all-star roster of journalists with whom he has worked.Hewitt also speaks bluntly, with affection and humor, about the promise and the shortcomings of television news, and offers surprising perspectives on its continued power and potential, as we move into a new media environment. "I may not know a lot", Hewitt is fond of saying, "but I think I know how to tell a story". Never has his storytelling talent been on better display than in the pages of this extraordinary book.

About the author (2001)

Don Hewitt was executive producer of 60 Minutes. He joined CBS in 1948 and was the producer-director of Douglas Edwards with the News and the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite before creating 60 Minutes in 1968.

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