Tim Russert

Rick Salutin doesn’t often get a fact wrong. (His interpretations can be debatable, although he’d be surprised how often this corner agrees with him.) But when Rick wrote, “Back in 1995, [Tim Russert] made a guest appearance as himself on an NBC cop show, Homicide, for which they wrote in a ‘cousin’ of his named Lt. Russert – as if he needed some extra promo,” it’s almost exactly backward. The Megan Russert character was long-standing, and the character who got written in was this broadcaster fellow “Tim Russert.” And of course, he didn’t need extra promo: the show did. It always did. It was finally cancelled, unloved except by six or eight regular viewers.

The sudden loss of NBC journalist Tim Russert last Friday has led to numerous tributes to one of the great journalists of the modern age. Meet the Press has become, since its inception, an institution in American television. Started under the stewardship of Lawrence Spivak, Meet the Press has allowed the most extraordinary events and public personalities to unfold before our very eyes. In the past eighteen years, Tim Russert came to embody Meet the Press. His incisive interviews, his well-researched panel discussions, and his overall knowledge of politics beyond the normal gaze of the journalist made him a unique and inspiring figure.

(Updated with video of classic Russert.)