da: The New York Times
Don Hewitt, who changed the course of broadcast news by creating the television magazine “60 Minutes,” fusing journalism and show business as never before, and who then presided over that much-copied program for nearly four decades, died Wednesday at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 86 and also had a home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.The cause was cancer, his wife, Marilyn Berger, said. In an interview in March, Mr. Hewitt said that doctors had found a cancerous tumor on his pancreas and that he was being admitted to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan for treatment.
In a career of more than half a century at CBS News, Mr. Hewitt bridged the history of television journalism, from its birth in the long shadow of radio, through its golden age as an unrivaled fixture in dens and living rooms, to its middle-age present, under siege by the Internet. As a director and producer, Mr. Hewitt helped shape the early broadcasts of pioneers like…