Ed Blair

Ed Blair is a pioneer of broadcast journalism. He was the first news director of the Atlanta CBS-TV station in the Sixties while serving also as the network's special correspondent appearing often on the Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Invited by the Defense Department and U.S. Information Agency, his work as a news correspondent took him on a six nation tour of Europe reporting on the readiness of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces to meet the threat of the Soviet Union.

Communists security check points reluctantly allowed him to go behind the Berlin Wall into East Berlin. Forbidding his taking of news film he secreted his 16mm movie camera beneath his raincoat in defiance of the prohibition while clearing the military checkpoint manned by armed guards. Walking the streets of East Berlin he realized why the communists wanted no filming.Not to be deterred Blair operated the camera while holding it at the hip using a wide angle lens.The filming captured pictures of the many office buildings which were mere facades erected to impress the few visitors allowed into the isolated German city. No street activity to speak of. No people coming and going to work in the structures which had no lights turned on during a cold gray rainy day.

Taking a sabattical from journalism Blair founded one of the first discount air carriers. Operating a 77-passenger DC-7 the carrier transported passengers to exotic vacation resorts in the United States, Mexico, South America,and the Carribean.

After operating the company for four years Blair sold the air carrier to a group of investors that came to include the folksy Grand Old Opry star Minnie Pearl.

Leaving the airline adventure behind he spent the next four years researching and writing the non-fiction book Odyssey of Terror, a vivid account of a history making hijacking. Publishers Weekly said of the book ..."grisly, gripping reading that leaves the reader holding on, but barely." It was this air piracy that moved the congress to empower the FAA to implement stringent new measures of security at 531 of the nation's airports. The measures stemmed the tide of skyjackings in the Seventies. Better than none at all the system worked until the multiple 9-11 hijackings by terrorists who flew the passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers,destroying the twin skyscrapers and killing thousands of people at work in dozens of financial businesses.

During the formative years of CNN Blair signed on as a writer, editor,and executive and supervising producer of news programs. After a fifteen year tenure at CNN Blair retired.

Travels now take him to distant points on the compass without the pressures of journalism. With his Chinese wife Caswan, Blair gets away from his home base in Atlanta when possible to explore his wife's native country. But he has found time to write an autobiography recounting his many years in broadcasting that began in radio during World War Two...a journalism career that saw him helping to give birth to the infant news programming on television, a task to which he devoted fifteen years.

Entitled In My Simply Amazing Time, Blair released the book for publication in 2012.