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Remembering Journalist Daniel Schorr

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(July 23) -- Daniel Schorr, who died today at age 93, spanned several generations of journalism, from the Cold War to Twitter.

Schorr had the first televised interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, and he wrote his first commentary on a computer just this past December.

"Big day in my career," Schorr tweeted at 6:41 a.m. on Dec. 9, 2009. "First time I composed my commentary for All Things Considered on my computer. Good-bye, typewriter."

And as colleagues were saying goodbye to him, here are some of their thoughts about him from the past and now:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward in 1977: He was "certainly one of the finest broadcast journalists and ... one of the toughest reporters in the business."

Former CBS Washington bureau colleague Roger Mudd: "He was sophisticated about the government and how it works. He was a damned vacuum cleaner, is what he was."

National Public Radio partner Scott Simon: "No other journalist in memory saw as much history as Daniel Schorr. He was born the year before the Russian Revolution and lived to see the Digital Revolution. He was there before the Berlin Wall went up and there a generation later when it came down. He was born before people had radio in their homes but pioneered the use of radio, television, satellites and then the Web to report the news."

Washington Post political reporter and columnist David Broder: "I think he's unique in the sense that he's been at the center of so many different stories, both here in Washington and overseas, for so long. He kept his perspective so well and does not ever exaggerate what's taking place, but really let you know why it's important."

Academic Geoffrey Cowan: "He lived through so many years of history, and he put that to the service of his commentaries."

And here's what Schorr wrote in his 2001 memoir, "Staying Tuned," about himself: "It must mean something that, unable to accept the dictates of my bosses, I ended up in confrontations with Bill Paley after a quarter-century at CBS and with Ted Turner after six years with CNN. It may be that I am just hard to get along with, but to me it always seemed that some principle was involved."
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