Newsman Schieffer is calling it a day
Longtime journalist set to retire
Veteran CBS News Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer announced Tuesday at the Texas journalism school named for him that he’ll be retiring this summer.
It’s not his first retirement announcement but, at age 78, it looks like it has a good chance of sticking. Schieffer was speaking to students at an annual symposium that bears his name at TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism in Fort Worth, his alma mater.
“It’s been a great adventure,” Schieffer said at the college.
“You know, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world because as a little boy, as a young reporter, I always wanted to be a journalist, and I got to do that. And not many people get to do that, and I couldn’t have asked for a better life or something that was more fun and more fulfilling.”
A former newspaper reporter at the Fort Worth Star- Telegram, Schieffer joined CBS News in 1969 and has been the network’s chief Washington correspondent since 1992. He began at the political affairs show Face the Nation in 1991, asking direct questions to politicians in a Texas twang.
He had an unexpected career highlight starting in 2005, filling in as anchor of the CBS Evening News following Dan Rather’s exit for a year and a half until Katie Couric took over the role. His folksy style got good reviews, boosted ratings and healed morale at the news division following the network’s discredited report on former president George W. Bush’s military service.
Schieffer survived bladder cancer about a decade ago, a brush with mortality that was one factor in his 2008 announcement that he would retire with the inauguration of a new president in January 2009.
CBS would not talk about potential successors at Face the Nation.