Is It Just Me? Do You Think Lloyd Robertson Was a Great Journalist?

At long last Lloyd Robertson is stepping down, resigning as anchor of CTV national news.  I'll bet Lloyd can't find anyone still in the business who was there when he got in back in the early 50's.   Pretty much anybody and everybody he looked up to has long settled in for the eternal dirt nap.

Lloyd is a fixture, I'll give him that.   Then again, so is a lamp post but you won't find too many lamp posts still around from the early 50's.

But was there any real greatness to Lloyd Robertson or is he just an old fart with a faithful following?  I can't think of any great journalistic moment that characterizes Lloyd.   I remember during the Montreal Olympics when some Russian ox set a world record for the clean and jerk in weightlifting whereupon Lloyd opined, "Gee, that looks heavy."  Really, Lloyd?  Really?  It "looks heavy"?

I was disappointed so many years ago when Lloyd didn't step down as expected to make way for Keith Morrison.  Of course I wasn't quite so disappointed as Keith must have been before he made his way to the TV studios of California and spent much too much time in the sun.  Keith, however, was a journalist and did some good work in his day which concluded before he got into hawking lurid tales of sensational murders.

I grew up in the era of Cronkite, Chancellor, Huntley, Brinkley, Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid, and later, Dan Rather, Robert McNeil & Jim Lehrer, Peter Jennings, and Bob Schieffer - all Robertson's contemporaries.  If he's to be measured by anybody it's those guys.  They set the bar and, when you look at it that way, Lloyd Robertson was pretty damned mediocre.