Mark Knoller

Mark Knoller, the veteran CBS News White House correspondent revered for his encyclopedic logs of presidential life, died August 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. after a period of declining health. He was 73.

Born February 20, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York, Knoller discovered journalism early and never let go. After graduating from New York University, he started as an intern and copy boy at New York's WNEW Radio, later becoming a weekend reporter before joining the Associated Press Radio Network in 1975. He came to CBS News in 1988, initially as an assignment editor in the Washington bureau, then soon moved into the role he would make famous: White House correspondent for CBS Radio.

Knoller went on to spend nearly 30 years in the role, covering presidents from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump. He became known to listeners by his resonant, booming voice in briefing rooms and on presidential trips-blunt in his questioning and scrupulously fair in his reporting.

What truly set Knoller apart was his self-appointed second beat: numbers. Frustrated by the absence of a single trove of presidential data, he began, during the Clinton years, to track virtually everything presidents did: speeches, news conferences, domestic and foreign trips, golf rounds, Camp David weekends, pardons, and vetoes. He shared this data freely with colleagues, historians and even White House staff, earning a reputation as the press corps' "unofficial presidential statistician."

Even as vocal issues later limited his radio work, Knoller reinvented himself as a prolific presence on Twitter (now X), building an audience of nearly 300,000 followers for his up-to-the-minute posts from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He continued logging, counting and explaining the presidency, an archivist in real time.

Knoller's craft earned some of journalism's most respected honors. In 2010, the White House Correspondents' Association presented him with the Aldo Beckman Award for overall excellence in White House coverage, praising his meticulous record-keeping as a public service. Earlier in his career, he received the Merriman Smith Award for deadline reporting on the presidency.

In 2020, amid pandemic-era restructuring, Knoller was laid off by CBS. However, he remained a go-to source for presidential facts well after his daily radio dispatches ended, thanks to his continued active social media presence.

Tributes after his death reflected the breadth of respect he commanded. Tom Cibrowski, president and executive editor of CBS News, called him "the hardest-working and most prolific White House correspondent of a generation," and the White House Correspondents' Association's Weijia Jiang remembered him as "the heart and soul of the White House press corps," a colleague always ready with help or perspective.

By Legacy News Staff

(Image: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)