Jeff Fager

Wellesley High School Author: Jeff Fager (1973)

Jeff was intrigued by politics at WHS, and a few years after graduation he began his career in broadcast news in Boston and joined CBS News in 1982. Jeff was Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News from 1996 to 1998 and held senior and field producer positions for that and other CBS News programs, including 60 Minutes. He left the Evening News in 1998 to become the first executive producer of 60 Minutes II. In June 2004, he assumed the position of Executive Producer of 60 Minutes.

Jeff’s book, Fifty Years of 60 Minutes, tells the inside story of the legendary program, from its almost accidental birth through five decades of in-depth reporting by talented producers and beloved correspondents. The book shares the secret of what has made the program exceptional for all these years and how it has maintained such high quality to this day: why founder Don Hewitt believed “hearing” a story is more important than seeing it (and thus why he closed his eyes in the screening room), why competition was encouraged to preserve a sense of urgency, why the “small picture” is the best way to illuminate a larger one, and why the most memorable stories are almost always those with a human being at the center.

Jeff Fager was executive producer of 60 Minutes for 14 years and, as just the second person to run the program in its first fifty years on television, reshaped it into a more editorially vibrant, news conscious broadcast.  During his entire tenure 60 Minutes was the most watched news program in America. In 2011, Fager was named the first chairman of CBS News, a role in which he was asked to remake the rest of news division’s platforms on television, radio and the Internet, in the same way he rejuvenated 60 Minutes, which he continued to oversee as executive producer. 

In recognition for these and his other achievements, Fager received the 2013 Paul White Award, the highest honor given by the Radio, Television, Digital News Association. In his 37 years with CBS News, as executive producer and before that as producer, he earned 84 Emmy awards, 13 Peabody awards, and 10 duPont Columbia awards.  He also covered stories in more than 40 countries and produced dozens of interviews with world leaders including 4 U.S. presidents.

Jeff has been generous with his time for the students of WHS by appearing during Seminar Days and anchoring the Foreign Policy discussion at Turn Out the Lights.