5 ms·

Before anyone asks why this is on Hacker News, he was a news reporter hacker.

by Oompa 17y ago

mblakele 17y ago
...and hacked policy too: http://www.google.com/search?q=cronkite+drug+policy http://www.google.com/search?q=cronkite+drug+policy
quizbiz 17y ago
I did some research to back your claim, searching for articles that would point out how he changed news. I failed to find the analysis I sought-after* but I did find a bunch of articles indicating that this was coming, sadly (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/television/26arts-CRONKITEISSE_BRF.html?ref=television http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/television/26arts-CRO...). *Interesting that Google is flooded with reports about his death. I'm about to try Bing, but what I would expect is that such reports would be limited to news.google.com but rather, 25 pages in, reports about his death still come up. His wikipedia article is one of the few exceptions. EDIT: Bing does a bit better but still, I never realized how poorly search engines manage live content. On the one hand, they update their cache quickly and rank them correctly, but news articles should be news, not content results(?).
- quisxt 17y ago
  I can think of two notable cases where he "changed" the news. The first was his editorial after the Tet offensive, which I already posted above. The second is his (behind the scenes) role in taking on McCarthy as part of Edward R. Murrow's See it Now broadcast. It might still be a bit of a stretch to call it hacking the news, but it's not much of a stretch. NPR has a piece about the See it Now episode, as told by Cronkite, on their site: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1753982 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1753982
Scriptor 17y ago
So is everyone who becomes famous in their respective field a "hacker"? What were his innovations? Did he come up with some clever new way of doing the news? Just because you're good at something doesn't make you a "hacker".
- derefr 17y ago
  I believe the word people are searching for in this situation is actually "pioneer." He was a pioneering TV news anchor. Hackers like pioneers, whether they end up innovating or simply exploring uncharted territory.
  - Scriptor 17y ago
    Then I'd like to see posts on HN linking directly to such stuff discussing his pioneering. An obituary is not the best way to do that.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "So is everyone who becomes famous in their respective field a "hacker"? " No, but you see, the death of (US based) celebrities is of great interest to hackers worldwide under the "On Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. " guideline, because such deaths are, of course, gratifying to intellectual curiosity. Strangely enough this bit of the guidelines doesn't seem to be having an effect "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]

Before anyone asks why this is on Hacker News, he was a news reporter hacker.

by Oompa 17y ago

Before anyone asks why this is on Hacker News, he was a news reporter hacker.

...and hacked policy too: http://www.google.com/search?q=cronkite+drug+policy http://www.google.com/search?q=cronkite+drug+policy

quizbiz 17y ago

I did some research to back your claim, searching for articles that would point out how he changed news. I failed to find the analysis I sought-after* but I did find a bunch of articles indicating that this was coming, sadly (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/television/26arts-CRONKITEISSE_BRF.html?ref=television http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/television/26arts-CRO...). *Interesting that Google is flooded with reports about his death. I'm about to try Bing, but what I would expect is that such reports would be limited to news.google.com but rather, 25 pages in, reports about his death still come up. His wikipedia article is one of the few exceptions. EDIT: Bing does a bit better but still, I never realized how poorly search engines manage live content. On the one hand, they update their cache quickly and rank them correctly, but news articles should be news, not content results(?).

quisxt 17y ago
I can think of two notable cases where he "changed" the news. The first was his editorial after the Tet offensive, which I already posted above. The second is his (behind the scenes) role in taking on McCarthy as part of Edward R. Murrow's See it Now broadcast. It might still be a bit of a stretch to call it hacking the news, but it's not much of a stretch. NPR has a piece about the See it Now episode, as told by Cronkite, on their site: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1753982 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1753982

Scriptor 17y ago

So is everyone who becomes famous in their respective field a "hacker"? What were his innovations? Did he come up with some clever new way of doing the news? Just because you're good at something doesn't make you a "hacker".

derefr 17y ago
I believe the word people are searching for in this situation is actually "pioneer." He was a pioneering TV news anchor. Hackers like pioneers, whether they end up innovating or simply exploring uncharted territory.
- Scriptor 17y ago
  Then I'd like to see posts on HN linking directly to such stuff discussing his pioneering. An obituary is not the best way to do that.
plinkplonk 17y ago
"So is everyone who becomes famous in their respective field a "hacker"? " No, but you see, the death of (US based) celebrities is of great interest to hackers worldwide under the "On Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. " guideline, because such deaths are, of course, gratifying to intellectual curiosity. Strangely enough this bit of the guidelines doesn't seem to be having an effect "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]