Eight men and women who either worked with, have written about, or are carrying on the legacy of the CBS newsman spoke to a diverse group of past, current and future news managers and reporters — those old enough to have watched him every night and too young to have ever watched him at all, at least not live.

Marcy McGinnis, who worked with Cronkite from the ages of 20 to 31, and who would later become London bureau chief for CBS News, talked about having annual meetings with Cronkite, who was as much a teacher as he was a newsman.

She talked about how, as a 21-year-old news assistant working at the Kennedy Space Center, she unwittingly gave Cronkite’s hotel room number to someone who’d called asking for it. “I never did fess up, but I learned never to give out Walter’s number to a viewer.”

As for his departure from the anchor chair, McGinnis tried to correct the record of an audience questioner about the Cronkite-to-Rather transition: “My recollection wasn’t that the brass tried to push him out, it’s that he reached this mandatory retirement age. Then it came down to Dan Rather and Roger Mudd,” she said, adding: “Dan eventually won the toss-up or however they decided it. Thankfully I wasn’t in management then.”

Don Godfrey, a professor at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism told the crowd, “Walter gave us the news we needed to know, not necessarily what the audience wanted to know.” A concept which almost seems quaint in this day and age of personalized information through a variety of online and social media sources.

Bill Silcock, also an associate professor at the Cronkite School says, “Walter would have embraced all of it — Facebook and Twitter. He would have had a great Twitter name.”

The panel simultaneously agreed: “Uncle Walter.” (By the way, it’s taken.)

A photo of former CBS News executive Marcy McGinnis with Walter
Cronkite as part of the Cronkite Reassessed panel at RTDNA.

After the jump: What Walter Cronkite called a “mistake” on his part…

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In her first public comments since Halderman’s arrest Oct. 1 on charges of attempted grand larceny, Zirinsky said yesterday that the hard-charging producer had raised the bulk of the money “from family and friends, not from people in the shop.”

That was all Zirinsky said. Like everyone at CBS, she is on media lockdown about the case. No mystery there. “Late Show” host David Letterman, the target of Halderman’s alleged $2 million extortion try, is a cash cow for CBS.

Halderman’s attorney, Gerald Shargel, argued in court yesterday that his client is guilty of no crime and that charges should be dropped. Halderman was only trying to sell a screenplay to Letterman, Shargel said, not shake him down about his intra-network sexual liaisons.

Letterman’s attorney, Daniel J. Horwitz, labeled it “classic blackmail,” not a business transaction. Both sides said they would go to trial, if necessary. The judge is expected to rule in January.

Meanwhile, Halderman’s suspension went from paid to unpaid about two weeks ago, CBS sources confirm. Reason? He broke the morals clause in his contract, they say.

While current CBS employees aren’t talking, several alums are, including Marcy McGinnis, who worked with Halderman when she ran the London bureau from 1992 to ’97. She considers him a friend.

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FOX 5 WNYW caught up Halderman at his Norwalk, CT home earlier today. “I can’t make any comment and I understand you’re just trying to do your job,” said Halderman, who knows that job well. “There’s nothing I can say. I hope you have a very nice day. I’m not trying to hide or run, but there’s nothing I can say,” Halderman told reporter Christine Persichetti,

Meanwhile, the NYTimes’ Bill Carter reveals it was Halderman’s co-workers who bailed him out of jail last Friday.

In another sign of how much support Mr. Halderman still commands inside CBS, two of his current co-workers, Andy Soto and Marc Goldbaum, posted the bond for Mr. Halderman’s bail. Neither man would comment Wednesday, but Mr. Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, confirmed that the men had posted the bond.

CBS News continues to decline comment on other questions about Halderman, who remains suspended with pay, but Carter writes the network is denying a report that it is conducting an internal investigation of Halderman.

The network said it had initiated no such investigation on its own and was only cooperating with the authorities who were pursuing the case.

Marcy McGinnis, who spent 35 years at CBS News, departing in 2005, was Halderman’s boss in the CBS News London bureau. “Joe went to every nasty place there was,” McGinnis tells Carter. After hearing the news of the killing of 16 children at a school in Scotland in 1996, he told her: “Just let me grab a bag and I’m there.” As for his way with women co-workers, McGinnis says Halderman was “a flirty guy,” adding, “I was his boss, of course, but he never put the moves on me.”

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Most recently Sando was the broadcast technical manager for the 2008 Republican National Convention.

In 1990, Sando was named operations director of special events for CBS News. He later served as director of operations for London and all of Europe for the network and headed up CBS’ presidential election coverage in 1996.

After the jump, some reflections from TVNewsers on Sando’s passing…

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