Christopher Glenn, 68; Journalist Was Host of ‘In the News’

Christopher Glenn, a longtime CBS News radio and TV reporter who was host of the Emmy award-winning children’s program “In the News,” died Tuesday of liver cancer at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut, the network announced. He was 68.

Glenn, who retired in February after 35 years with CBS, had been scheduled to be inducted in the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago on Nov. 4. He will now be inducted posthumously.

Last year the Radio and Television News Directors Assn. awarded Glenn the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast of 2005.

His distinctive voice was heard nationally at the top of the hour on the CBS “World News Roundup” and “The World Tonight,” capping the concise radio segments with the signature time-check, “Time on the roundup is ‘x’ minutes past the hour.”

“In the News” was designed to explain a single issue to young viewers in 2 1/2 minutes, like bites of news sandwiched between Saturday morning children’s entertainment. Glenn was the reporter and narrator for the condensed segments for 13 seasons, starting in 1971.

He also worked on “30 Minutes,” a weekly TV news magazine series patterned on “60 Minutes” and aimed at children that ran from 1978 to 1982.

Born March 23, 1938, in New York City, Joseph Christopher Glenn received his bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Colorado. He worked for Armed Forces Broadcasting while serving in the Army in 1960. That same year he married Dianne West, who survives him, along with their two daughters, Rebecca and Lindsay, and a sister.

After various radio jobs in New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., he joined CBS as a radio producer in 1971.

In 1984 he returned to the airwaves and worked as a national reporter.

Glenn said earlier this year that one of the most memorable stories he covered was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

“I had to get back on the air real fast to describe that, and had a very difficult time,” he told CBSNews.com in February. “It was a very, very emotional moment.... It was tough to keep it under control while I was doing that broadcast.”

Although he flourished in both radio and TV, Glenn said he liked the older medium.

“My personal preference would be radio,” he said at the time of his retirement. “That’s where I started, and I’ve always thought that the medium was especially good for communicating with audiences because you don’t just have to sit there and stare at the pictures. You have to tell them the story and make them understand, and I think that that’s much more of a challenge for a journalist, and it makes it more interesting in the long run.”

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claire.noland@latimes.com