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Retired Los Angeles television news reporter Saul Halpert has died at age 93. Halpert reported for Channel 7 (KABC), Channel 2 (KNXT/KCBS) and Channel 4 (KNBC/NBC4) in Los Angeles over a 40-year career and also taught journalism at USC. Halpert was a politics reporter for NBC4 and hosted "News Conference," the station's weekly Sunday morning news and politics show.
Halpert died due to declining health around 3 p.m. at his living assisted facility in Sherman Oaks, NBC4 reported.
"Saul fills our thoughts and memories today," Los Angeles-based journalist and friend Bob Tarlau in an email. "He was a treasure."
The City News Service story says that Halpert helped create the news department at Channel 7. He was at KNXT during The Big News era. "Halpert would tackle the most complicated story — and he got most of them because those who created the newscasts trusted him the most — and make it accessible to an audience in less than two minutes,” Big News veteran Joe Saltzman said. “He was always arguing for more time, for two and a half minutes, three minutes or more.”
There's a long and growing list of tributes from former colleagues at NewsGeezers.com. Halpert received his B.A. degree from USC and a master's degree in journalism from UCLA.
Halpert covered the Baldwin Hills Dam collapse and had to be rescued from the scene with his KNXT crew. And for those who remember the stories a few years ago around the Beatles first visit to Los Angeles in 1964, Halpert was the street reporter who covered the city's first experience with Beatlemania.
