Tue, 02/03/2015

Remembering Sanford Socolow

Sanford Socolow

We're sad to learn that CBS News producer Sanford Socolow passed away on Saturday, January 31, 2015 in New York City at the age of 86. Socolow worked for the International News Service (INS) in the early 1950s as a Far East Correspondent and started his work at CBS in the mid-50s, writing for Ned Calmer for the morning news and for Walter Cronkite on Eyewitness. Socolow enjoyed a long association with Walter Cronkite, which culminated in Socolow serving as the final executive producer of CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He was an instrumental part of Cronkite's coverage of several memorable events of the 20th century, including the Vietnam War, the upheaval at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the historic Moon Landing. Socolow transitioned into the executive suites as Vice President of CBS News and then as head of the Washington Bureau in the 1970s, and eventually moved to London to become the CBS News Bureau Chief. In the late 1980s he left CBS News to serve as the Executive Producer of the "Christian Science Monitor's" nightly newscast on the Discovery Channel, World Monitor

Below are some selections from Socolow's 2008 Archive interview:

On working with Walter Cronkite:

On the biggest problem facing the news media today:  

The dilution of what I would call news standards. I’m an old fogey and you go ask people in news today - I’m described as "yesterday." But I want to tell you, "yesterday," generally speaking, was better than today in terms of the quality of news. There’s a lot of very good news available now. Probably never as much good news as there is today. But you have to go hunt for it. You have to go find it. But Edward R. Murrow’s dream state of news - it’s out there. I’m talking about C-SPAN, for instance, and C-SPAN2. And occasional things on Discovery, and Arts & Entertainment, and PBS. Let’s not leave out PBS. There’s a lot of very good information out there, but instead of getting it in an easy off the cuff way you have to go find it.

On his legacy:

Watch Sanford Socolow's full Archive interview and read his obituary in The New York Daily News.