“’60 Minutes’ Founder Arthur Bloom Dies”

CBSNews.com reports: “Arthur Bloom, the award-winning CBS News television director responsible for the distinctive on-screen look of 60 Minutes since its debut 37 years ago and who led the modernization of on-screen graphics at CBS News, died at home today of cancer. He was 63 and resided in Grandview-on-Hudson, N.Y.

He was one of the last remaining original 60 Minutes founders still working for the program. Bloom also played a role in helping to train Dan Rather to succeed Walter Cronkite in the CBS News anchor chair in 1981.

Bloom spent his entire 45-year career at CBS and used his keen eye and a symphonic vision of camera work to become one of the medium’s best directors of live political event coverage. His outstanding talent was recognized with the first Lifetime Achievement Award in News Direction from the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1995. The same organization had honored him twice before, once for news direction of CBS News coverage of the 1976 Democratic and Republican conventions and, before that, in 1973 for his work on 60 Minutes.”

Bloom’s talent and humor “were the very spirit of CBS News,” Walter Cronkite said. “It is difficult to think of our craft without him.” Here’s the full story, including quotes from Jeff Fager, Don Hewitt, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Dan Rather, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Lesley Stahl, Bob Simon, and Andy Rooney…