Remembering Morley Safer

It was sad to hear the news yesterday that, barely a week after CBS announced his retirement, Morley Safer died at the age of 84.

As a writer, journalist and news nerd, Safer was a pillar of achievement for all of his work with 60 Minutes.

And as a soap opera nerd, I think my third or fourth thought after hearing the news? Was, “Oh, yeah. He did that piece on the end of Guiding Light.”

Though the segment still leaned a bit too heavily on some of the weirdness of soaps and the things that, out of context, always seem so absurd about soaps, I think Safer’s piece captured the significance of GL, and the reasons why people loved it so.

Safer’s passing is, like the end of GL, the end of an era. Safer was the last of a storied group of journalists who made such an initial impression on 60 Minutes – Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Dan Rather and Harry Reasoner among them. And as with GL, while others will take his place, we are unlikely to see the likes of Safer again.