Donald Shepard Hewitt: A Brief Biography

Donald Shepard Hewitt (Don Hewitt) was born on December 14, 1922 to his Jewish parents, Ely S. Hewitt and Frieda Pike Hewitt. Hewitt was raised in suburban New Rochelle, New York where he attended New Rochelle High School. He went on to attend to New York University on a track scholarship, however, he quit school in the fall of 1941 and got a job earning fifteen dollars a week. In 1942, Hewitt enlisted in the merchant marine and was assigned to the North Atlantic While in the merchant marines, he wrote for the army newspaper “Stars and Stripes.” After World War II was over he became the night editor of the Associated Press bureau in Memphis, Tennessee; where he met his first wife who he had 2 children with. Hewitt moved to New York with his family in 1946. He got a new job in New York as an editor for “Pelham Sun,” Westchester County’s newspaper. At eighty dollars a week in 1948, Hewitt joined CBS television. He directed CBS’s first fifteen-minute nightly newscast on May 3.

Between 1948 and 1951 he invented cue cards for newsreaders and the double projection system that lead to eyewitness reporting. He also help produce and broadcast the first Republican and Democratic Party convention. The way he used charts, graphs, maps and still photos left a lasting impact on Journalism and became the early architecture of network newscast. He also, developed a way to superimpose text. He also produced the first televised presidential debate, between Nixon and Kennedy. The network’s coverage of the Kennedy assassination lead by Hewitt helped America decide where to go for their