Media Deaths 2009: Cronkite, Hewitt, Dunne, Novak, Safire, Mays, Harvey & More Remembered

Media Deaths 2009: Cronkite, Hewitt, Dunne, Novak, Safire, Mays, Harvey & More Remembered

2009 may go down as the year of celebrity deaths — in no small part due to Walter Cronkite, who passed away in July and whose September memorial was one of the biggest events of the year. But Cronkite was just one of many journalists and members of the media industry who died this year.

Many media legends died in 2009: "60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt died in August, just one day after Robert Novak and one week before Vanity Fair's Dominick Dunne. Radio legend Paul Harvey passed away in February, New York Times columnist William Safire in September, and literary heavyweights John Updike (January), Alfred Knopf Jr. (February), and Frank McCourt (July) all died in 2009. So did king of the infomercials Billy Mays.

We remember these men and the other men and women in the media who died in 2009 at our In Media Memoriam 2009 Big News page.

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