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Bill Plante marks 50 years at CBS News

Loyola alum Bill Plante started working for CBS News on June 1, 1964. Fifty years later, he’s still going strong.

Plante, who grew up in Rogers Park and graduated from Loyola in 1959, is the network’s senior White House correspondent and has covered every presidential campaign since 1968. He’s also reported on the war in Vietnam, Pope John Paul II’s visit to the United States, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic civil rights march through Alabama.

Before he had a front-row seat to some of the biggest news events of the past half century, Plante was a Loyola student—a very involved Loyola student, according to a 2013 interview in “Compass,” the School of Communication’s alumni magazine.

Plante wrote for the school newspaper, served as student government president, and worked at two radio stations. But it was his time in the classroom that paid the most dividends, he said.

“The liberal arts education at Loyola is what helped and prepared me for what was to come,” Plante told “Compass.”

“Students should consider themselves to be in a good spot at Loyola,” he said. “The Loyola of today was such a far cry (from) what it was 50 years ago.”

Visit the “Compass” website to read the rest of the interview.