And that's the way it is...

I was nearing the end of a too-long work day Friday when word came that Walter Cronkite was dead at 92.

The so-called "Most Trusted Man in America" had died from complications from dementia. I turned the TV to CNN and, sure enough, the instant news coverage morphing into analysis had begun. I don't recall who the interviewer was, nor whom he was interviewing. But it occurred to me that Cronkite, the consummate pro, probably would have been uncomfortable with the saturation coverage sure to ensue this weekend.

I don't have time to go into depth right now; a list of errands awaits on this Saturday morning. For now, I'll share two excerpts from a news obituary, written by Robert Lloyd, TV critic at the Los Angeles Times, that we ran today in The Oregonian.

He was serious but good-humored; he had a common touch without being folksy; he was impartial but not amoral; disinterested but not detached; above the fray but not without a point of view, although he never made himself the story.

And...

Network news anchors still aim for that mix of eloquence and authority that Cronkite embodied, but they compete, at a disadvantage, with the noise of an ascendant punditocracy and the mountain-from-molehill nattering of cable news organizations that live on crises -- it's not the voice of reassuring honestry that they cultivate but one of perpetual anxiety.

Amen to that. R.I.P., Walter.

March 6, 1981 file photo by The Associated Press