Published July 8, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wA0lO6Osq4

John Henning, a fixture of Boston television news for decades, has died after a battle with leukemia, the Globe is reporting.

A lot of former TV newsmen work here at WBUR, and they all have something good to say about Henning.

“He was a traditionalist in the best sense of that word — a classic broadcaster of another generation,” says Paul La Camera, the WBUR general manager and former TV executive. “He was not a social media guy, Andrew.”

“A gentleman,” says my boss, John Davidow, once the assistant news director at Channel 4 when Henning was a correspondent. “The thing about John was how much he knew. He had encyclopedic knowledge about who and what did what to whom.”

“With him goes the secrets of the bones!” says David Boeri, the longtime TV reporter. “He knew the skeletons!”

Boeri remembers: “In an earlier era in the State House … the first question for the governor would go to the dean of reporters. And Henning would get the first question.”

Fred Thys, longtime State House observer, interjects: “In the time when I got here in ’98 … the tradition was gone, but he still got the first question. He was the most seasoned of the political reporters. He was no-nonsense.”

Boeri continues: “He knew the politics. He knew the craft. … He was sort of a wry observer of human behavior and the weaknesses of political officials.”

Henning was 73.