By Gordon Joseloff
Richard C. Hottelet, my personal link to the legendary group of CBS News correspondents who covered World War II under Edward R. Murrow, died today at his Wilton home. He was 97.
Richard C. Hottelet: “consummate professional.” (CLICK TO ENLARGE) CBS News photo
Hottelet was the last survivor of the group that became known as the “Murrow Boys. He joined CBS in London in 1944 and retired in 1985.
I first met him in the late 1970s. He was covering the United Nations for CBS but did an hourly network radio newscast daily before heading over to his U.N. office. I often wrote his hourly newscast for him.
I had joined CBS News a short time earlier after working for United Press International in outposts that included London and Moscow. Hottelet had worked for UPI’s predecessor, United Press, in London, Moscow, Berlin, and Washington.
We did not talk about our common postings, but I am sure he knew my background. Nothing got by him.
He would come into the radio newsroom every day a short time before his newscast. Always dressed nattily, not unlike the diplomats he was then covering, he would bellow out a hearty “hello, chum” to others and me. I am not sure he remembered names.
While I wrote newscasts for Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and other CBS News luminaries as I began my 16-year CBS News career, I remember being most intimidated by Hottelet. Living Murrow legend and all that.
I should not have been. While he had a reputation early in his career of being aggressive and sometimes abrasive, by the time I knew him, I saw no sign of that.
He was the consummate professional. He would make a change or two in some wording but otherwise read my newscasts as I had written them. I knew he favored foreign news, and I tried to keep that in mind.
At the end of the newscast, he would quickly exit the newsroom and head to the United Nations to do some reporting. Clearly, he liked reporting the news more than reading newscast words written by others.
I lost touch with him as I returned to Moscow and then Tokyo as a CBS News correspondent. I ran into him some years ago at a Wilton Library event. He greeted me warmly but am not sure he remembered how we knew each other.
I knew he, like many other retired newsmen, were not particularly happy with today’s news.
“People don’t want serious news,” he told the Wilton Bulletin several years ago.
“They like features, they like human interest, they like to shed a tear or smile a smile, rather than move their minds. The news business is really what people have made of it, and it’s largely feature. It’s not that serious anymore.”
Still there are many who remember how it used to be and how much Richard C. Hottelet contributed to our understanding of the world around us.
Farewell, chum. Job well done.
Gordon Joseloff, a former Westport first selectman, is founding editor and publisher of WestportNow.
Very nice report. Thank you, Mr. Joseloff.