White and CBS received a 1945 Peabody Award for Outstanding Reporting of the News. He left CBS in May 1946 to write a textbook, "News on the Air" (1947), and for health reasons he moved to San Diego, California, in 1947. He accepted the position of associate editor of "The San Diego Journal" and became news director of KFMB radio and television in 1950. He covered the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Chicago for CBS in 1952.