For once I agree with the conventional wisdom: The death of of Peter Jennings at age 67, does mark the end of era. Back in the time of Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings, we took our news straight up, no ice, no sugar, no artificial sweetener. Jennings was serious, passionate, and demanding about the news, and the way that it should be presented. It doesn’t surprise me that colleagues at ABC recall what a strict taskmaster he was, and the manner in which all stories were subjected to Jennings’ exacting editing before they made it on the air. I recall during Jennings’ marathon coverage of 9/11, the many times during an exchange with a correspondent that he surprised his counterpart by challenging his or her information, or questioned some piece of speculation. It was in reassuring to see. Further, rather than offer those faux ad-libbed questions to correspondents after their reports, that are in fact scripted in advance, Jennings had a different approach. Long time Pentagon correspondent John McWethy ruefully spoke of how Jennings would never tell McWethy in advance what he was going to ask. Recalled McWethy,

“I never had a clue what he was going to ask. He would say, ‘I don’t want you to become stale, McWethy.’ Stale? I often was caught completely off guard. He loved it; I hated it.”

White House correspondent John Cochran had his own anecdote:

“Peter never liked the ties that I wore, and he would call my wife and say, ‘You’ve got to buy him better ties.’ He didn’t do it out of meanness. He just thought that I should look a little spiffier if I was going to be on World News Tonight.”

Jennings’ success was the triumph over all those who believe that worldliness and sophistication were somehow un-American traits. He triumphed over all those media scolds who constantly claimed that he was “biased” and “too liberal” in his views. In fact, I have little doubt that Jennings—like his journalistic forebears Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow-- was politically progressive. But it wasn’t ideology that made them great; it was intelligence, passion, hard work, and solid news judgment. He triumphed over the whispering campaign that followed him around, that he was “anti-Israel.” In fact, Jennings realized long before most people did, that the Middle East was not a zero sum game. One side’s success did not mean that the other side automatically lost. He communicated his view that progress would come only when right-wingers in Israel stopped talking wistfully about “greater Judea and Samaria,” and when Palestinians stopped talking about “pushing the Jews into the sea.”

The thing that resonated so strongly with his audience was that underneath the sophistication, underneath the slight Canadian lilt, underneath the good looks, Jennings was decidedly old school. He embodied the classic view that not only does the news matter, but each citizen keeping track of the news matters. From his more than 40 years of broadcasting, perhaps the quintessential footage of Jennings is of him as a 24 year broadcaster for Canadian television, interviewing a disaffected and slightly disheveled young man. “Had you planned on voting next year?” Jennings asked. “I don’t know, I haven’t decided on that yet” the man answered, looking sheepishly into the camera. His answer, however, didn’t satisfy Jennings. “Do you know how many political parties there are?” Jennings persisted. When the young man couldn’t answer, Jennings continued, “Do you know the name of any of them?” It is rare to see a newsman take such an activist, even antagonistic position with a man-on-the-street, and some would say that Jennings’ style during the interview was hectoring and unseemly. However, this is precisely why I watched Jennings throughout the 90’s. His view was that stuff matters, and it’s everyone’s obligation as good citizens to pay attention.

It is a sad irony that on 9/11, Peter Jennings made perhaps the dumbest decision of his life. He decided to start smoking again after having stopped decades earlier. It is a measure of how profoundly he was affected by those events, that he felt compelled to do something that was so obviously harmful. Also spurred on by 9/11, two years later Peter first received his American citizenship, in part to express his solidarity with the American people.

How do we know that a profoundly different news era is upon us? Because now that Dan Rather has stepped down, there are hints from reliable sources that CBS is talking with Katie Couric about taking over the anchor chair. Now, to be sure, I like Katie Couric, and have found her to be delightful over the years. That said, I have trouble picturing her confronting Nixon at a press conference during Watergate, reporting on the integration of the University of Alabama while being heckled and spat on by mobs, or for that matter, breaking the Abu Ghraib story. The age of infotainment is upon is, where ratings and market share rule.

Or is this just history repeating itself? Jennings’ death interestingly recapitulates that of his journalistic ancestor, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow, a lifelong heavy smoker, also died of lung cancer, in 1965. By the late 1950’s, Murrow, a giant in the news business, was increasingly at odds with his parent company CBS. The passion that marked his World War II broadcasts and his expose of Joe McCarthy in the early 50’s, no longer found the same public support in the quietist, Eisenhower years. He found his airtime shrinking. In 1957, Murrow’s pioneering documentary series “See It Now” was cancelled, with CBS chairman William S. Paley complaining about the show, “It gave me a stomach ache.” In 1958, at a convention of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Murrow issued a broadside, calling them “fat, comfortable, and complacent.” He went on to rap television for "being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us." Forty-five years later, we are worrying about the same issue. I don’t know whether that’s frightening or reassuring. I do know this: In the endless battle between apathy and involvement, Peter Jennings will be missed.