Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television

by Don Hewitt

The producer for "60 Minutes" recounts his early experiences and his more than fifty years with CBS, including the first broadcasts of political conventions, the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and the events portrayed in the film "The Insider."

Genres: Nonfiction, Journalism, Tv, Biography, Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2001

About the author

Don Hewitt created the CBS newsmagazine broadcast 60 Minutes in 1968. He was the executive producer of the show until June 2004.

Hewitt began his career with CBS in 1948 as an associate director.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great on the early history of TV, and even before that to his experiences in London during WWII - the fact that even then Americans behaved as the "ugly American" and the Brits couldn't wait for us to go home was enlightening.
Hewitt loved the strip clubs in his youth.
60 minutes only came about after he was demoted off the Cronkite nightly news and did a few documentaries. Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner were his first two anchors (a term he shares the invention of). He gives huge credit to the producers, also journalists, who are never seen on camera.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a memoir from the successful producer of "60 Minutes", a well known award winning television show. There is very little about Hewitt's early life as a reporter and this reads more like a history of the TV show, its trials, tribulations and how he developed the concept behind it.

He writes of some of the "wars" between the networks, the issue of "infotainment" and some of the challenges of the future.There were some interesting sections on how facts have been kept out of the news in the past.


Just light reading without much depth.
A disappointment.

[Cynthia Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Don Hewitt's "Tell me a Story." A word of warning thought, if you're not interested in television news and it's inner mechanisms, you probably won't find it nearly as fascinating as I did. At times Hewitt can seem as though he's gloating about 60 Minutes and what the show was accomplished. However a man who's been in the business since its inception and helped to invent some of the concepts we now use on a daily basis and can't imaging going without is entitled to gloat just a little bit

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had some good stories. Just couldn't get past Hewitt caving in to CBS lawyers on the Wigand tobacco interview on 60 Minutes. Everything he ever did for TV news was cheapened by failing to take a stand. He and Mike Wallace should have resigned in protest and made CBS corporate sphincters tighten a bit--hell, they were both pushing 80 even then--but the paycheck was more important, so they caved. Even so, some of the other stories are worth reading: particularly the LBJ library-opening anecdote.

[Vanessa FM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just unbelievably amazing!
I could not put this book down. It was so moving and inspiring that now, either I am a journalist or I am nothing. To have lived in the times of Don Hewitt and Walter Cronkite and all these great journalist! Good times those would have been.

This was exhilarating to read. :D

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly readable. Supports the author's claim that what has made "60 Minutes" first-rate for so many years is the writing and not the visuals. I would have rated the book higher if I were into journalism (either print or broadcast).

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given this book as a gift from Marilyn Hewitt, the author's wife (well, widow). Reading it made me sad that I'll never get to meet the man--as this book illustrates, he's always got an entertaining story handy, and even though he swears like a sailor in a paddy wagon he's great company. The first half the book resonates with me most because of the way it captures the lawlessness, the revolution-in-the-air atmosphere of the early days of television. Hewitt's own role in infusing the news with entertainment--or at least, in packaging it that way--I'll leave to the history books. Surprising how downbeat he is about television towards the end--for all it's given him, he argues, convincingly and against his own interests, that this isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drew up the First Amendment. Some of the proposals here, coming as they do from an avowed centrist, border nearly on Socialism, and I gasped a couple of times at his suggestions. And he is presciently gung-ho about the power of the internet to disseminate information in a way every bit as disruptive to television as television was to print and radio. Props to him for refusing to play it safe, in what could very well have been (and is to some degree) a victory lap.

[Fred Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hewitt tells all about 30 years of producing 60 Minutes. He gives you the inside story including what he thought of many of the people he dealt with including criticism. He tells his side of the story on many newscasters, politicians, and others.

[ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

So fascinating especially considering the parallels to um Right Now. very chatty and tangential in ways that felt like i was having a conversation with a cool uncle. thank you michael for keeping me on track by stopping by my desk every three days to see if i had finished it

[Beaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like 60 minutes, this is very interesting to read.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir from the late creator/producer of 60 Minutes is packed with great stories and peppered with insight into news, journalism, entertainment, radio, television, politics, etc. I loved it.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked it up for trip to San An...very readable...interesting hx of early broadcast journalism on the way to the concept and development of 60 Minutes...

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the greatest book, but it is an interesting tale about the history of 60 Minutes.