Don Hewitt, Creator of 60 Minutes, Dies at 86

Don Hewitt, creator of CBS News' long-running news magazine 60 Minutes has died. According to CBS, the cause of deah was pancreatic cancer. He was 86 years old.

Hewitt got his start directing Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. 60 Minutes, his concept for a Life magazine-style news show, debuted in 1968 and remains on the air to this day. The show became so influential, Hewitt told a reporter in 1987, "We've sort of become America's ombudsman."

60 Minutes hasn't just been an important cultural institution: It's been a major profit center for CBS. A Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism report from this year estimated that the network's morning and evening news programming, which includes Evening News, The Morning Show, 48 Hours Mystery, Face the Nation, Sunday Morning, and 60 Minutes earned the network $500 million in 2008. (2009 may not be such a good year: Two weeks ago the Associated Press reported CBS' profits were down a staggering 96 percent.)

In his 2002 memoir, Tell Me a Story, Hewitt, who left the show in 2004, wrote the following: "60 Minutes proved that television news, done with flair, can be worthwhile and profitable at the same time, in fact, very profitable. In that regard, no one honestly believes that the heads of the networks woke up one morning and said to themselves, 'You know, I don't think we are doing enough to inform the American people.' What they woke up and said to themselves was, 'Can you believe the money that 60 Minutes makes?"

The New York Times obituary can be found here; The Washington Post's here.