Jim McLaughlin, Veteran CBS Producer Who Elevated Arts Coverage, Dies at 74

Jim McLaughlin, the Emmy-winning television news producer whose work at CBS News transformed the way the arts were covered on American television, died August 7, 2025, in New York City after a brief battle with cancer. He was 74, just days before his 75th birthday. His sister, Mary Ann McLaughlin, was at his side.

Over a career spanning more than four decades, McLaughlin became one of broadcast journalism’s most passionate advocates for the arts. At a time when cultural programming was often sidelined, he used his platform to spotlight theater, music, dance, and visual art with the same rigor and storytelling flair afforded to politics or breaking news.

After early work at WCBS-TV, where he expanded arts coverage alongside correspondent Dennis Cunningham, McLaughlin joined CBS This Morning and later CBS Sunday Morning, the program he had long aspired to join. There, he produced profiles of Arthur Miller, Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Bernadette Peters, and Carol Channing; perennial coverage of the Tony Awards and Kennedy Center Honors; and deeply reported features on landmark cultural moments.

Among his most acclaimed pieces were a 1994 segment on Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here, a groundbreaking work on the AIDS crisis; coverage of the Berlin Reichstag’s 1995 wrapping by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; and Opera on the Farm, a lyrical tribute to Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land filmed in America’s heartland.

Friends and colleagues say McLaughlin brought a theatrical sensibility to broadcast journalism — marrying keen editorial judgment with a love of showmanship — and an unwavering belief that the arts were essential to public life. A devoted New Yorker, he was a fixture in Broadway circles, known for his encyclopedic knowledge of theater and fierce loyalty to artists he admired.

He is survived by his sister, Mary Ann McLaughlin, and an extended family of friends and collaborators in the arts and media.