Nows and Forevers

Tonight ends the nearly 100-year run of the legendary CBS Radio News. CBS Radio was Edward R. Murrow’s “This Is London;” Robert Trout inventing the modern-day anchor during marathon all-night coverage of the D-Day invasion; wall-to-wall news of breaking news that used to draw the nation together; the poetry of Charles Osgood; the “World News Roundup,” every night since 1938; and so much more, day in, day out, til tonight.

I’ve depended on CBS Radio News all my life, whether it was growing up within earshot of the late, great WCBS Newsradio 88 or moving to the West Coast and KNX, or all the other places I’ve lived. I rarely missed Douglas Edwards and “World News Roundup” at 6 p.m. until he retired. CBS is a big part of how I learned about the world and what was happening in it . I’m fortunate to have gotten a look behind the scenes one summer afternoon in 1983 with Mr. Edwards as tour guide.

That afternoon with Mr. Edwards and my father in Manhattan 43 years ago, intertwined with the years before and the years after of listening to CBS Radio News, catalyzed my interest in journalism.

Even after my news go-to WCBS got killed two Augusts ago, I caught CBS News on Bloomberg Radio and KDKA-AM. I’ve even been interviewed on CBS Radio News and heard my voice on the news-on-the-hour on WCBS. That was a highlight I shared with my dad when we heard the clip together one evening.

Up til recently, when Bloomberg moved to ABC for its updates, it’s CBS where I’ve heard most of my breaking news.

Til now. Except that radio news isn’t a thing of the past. It’s a moment of now. It’s a personal mass medium, and one where you let the men and women of the air into your homes. WCBS-AM anchor Wayne Cabot’s elegy, the last 10 minutes of that storied radio station, shattered me as I listened in my car radio just before midnight on a Sunday night. Cabot’s words about how he came to WCBS, why a radio station mattered so much to a kid, mirrored my own childhood.

The connection, the importance, the absolute utility of finding out what’s happening in your world quickly and succinctly, always there when you need it. We need it more than ever.