Comment on ‘I Never Learned Anything by Talking.’ Watch Larry King on the Art of the Interview and a Shifting Media Landscape

In 2009, TV news legend Larry King sat down with TIME’s Gilbert Cruz to talk about his new memoir, My Remarkable Journey, a retrospective on his 50-year broadcasting career, and to answer questions submitted by readers about his life and work. King, who died on Saturday at the age of 87 in Los Angeles, hosted CNN’s Larry King Live for 25 years and became known as an iconic interviewer who would approach his exchanges with politicians, celebrities and other newsmakers with an intense curiosity and plainspoken demeanor that consistently got his subjects to speak intimately about their lives and work. King opened up about the art of the interview during their discussion, and his comments on the future of journalism, his concerns about the dark side of “new media” and the rise of TV news hosts with an ideological bent on both sides of the aisle are eerily relevant more than a decade later. Wearing his signature suspenders during his TIME interview, King politely pushed back when Cruz posed a question from a reader in Copenhagen, Denmark, who wanted to know if King agreed with the perception that sometimes he avoids “asking difficult questions.” “I’m not there to pin someone to the wall.