Nationally Known News Analyst
CEDRIC FOSTER '24, coast-to-coast news commentator, began his distinguished career as a newspaperman. In California he started with the Berkeley Times and was with the Associated Press in San Francisco. His journalistic activities later shifted to Connecticut, where he was a reporter for papers in New Britain, Waterbury and Hartford before becoming Connecticut manager of the United Press. Then came the financial editorship of the Hartford Times, which led to his radio career. When the Times established Station WTHT in Hartford in 1936, Mr. Foster was put in charge as manager and director of programs.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, Mr. Foster began a series of war commentaries which became so popular that the Mutual Broadcasting System put his WTHT broadcasts on its national network the following year. In 1941 he was invited to join the executive staff of the Yankee Network, with headquarters inßoston, and to present his expert news analyses over WAAB and WNAC. From Boston he con- tinued his coast-to-coast broadcasts for the Mutual System and added steadily to his national popularity and reputation. Today he rates as one of Mutual's ace commentators.
One reason for Mr. Foster's solid achievement as a news analyst is his first-hand knowledge of a great part of the globe. In addition to visisting every state in this country, he has traveled throughout Europe, and an earlier trip in the South Pacific was a tremendous asset in his broadcasts about the war in that theatre. Early in 1945 he returned to the Pacific for a three months' tour of battle areas as a radio war correspondent.
No news commentator on the air today takes his job more seriously than Mr. Foster. He not only is a conscientious student of national and world events, but he constantly travels to gain first-hand material and as a network executive is on the lookout for changing public taste in news listening. Typically enough, Mr, Foster's ALUMNI MAGAZINE article was prepared while he was 011 his way from Texas to Boston.
