Journalist Bill Shadel dies at 96

RENTON, Wash. – Bill Shadel, who covered D-Day for CBS Radio during World War II, became an ABC television anchor and moderated the third presidential debate between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, is dead at 96.

Shadel, who worked with Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith at CBS, was the first host of “Face the Nation” and later became a University of Washington communications professor, died Saturday at an assisted living home in this Seattle suburb, relatives and associates said.

Tapes of his wartime broadcasts are still used in journalism schools around the country.

“He was one of those who lived the principles of our craft,” Cronkite said Sunday. “Just to be listed on that (early CBS) team was a mark of a particularly successful journalistic practice, and he was certainly one of the very best.”

Shadel had gall bladder surgery two years ago and was in declining health from prostate cancer, said his son, Douglas Shadel of Seattle.

Shadel got his start in broadcasting as a studio musician on clarinet and saxophone at a time when radio stations were barred from playing recordings on the air because of a dispute with the musicians’ union.

He began in journalism as a National Rifle Association correspondent, became editor of the group’s magazine The American Rifleman and in 1943 assigned himself to Europe and was quickly recruited by Murrow to help CBS cover World War II.

Out of more than 500 U.S. reporters in Europe, Shadel was one of 28 who was present to give firsthand reports on the D-Day landings.

He and Murrow were the first reporters to see the concentration camp at Buchenwald on April 12, 1945, the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. After helping to launch “Face the Nation,” he became anchor of the ABC evening news, the role that landed him the presidential debate moderating job in 1960.

For John Glenn’s three-orbit flight in January 1962, Shadel was in the anchor chair for 12 hours, starting air at 6:30 a.m.

The next year – “when my ulcers were getting ulcers,” as he told The Times – he took the university job in Seattle, where he helped reshape the curriculum in what was then the Journalism Department by emphasizing practical application over theory.

Other survivors include his wife of more than 56 years, Julie, sons Gerald of Oak Harbor and David of Seattle, and two grandchildren.