Tim Russert, 1950-2008
All the blogs are all over the news of Tim Russert's sudden and unexpected death at age 58. For once, all the coverage, left and right, is of a kind -- praise for both Russert's professionalism and his character.
A reader on The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers' blog says, "It's like losing Cronkite!" Perhaps hyperbole, but Russert's influence does bring to mind the influence Walter Cronkite had on American public opinion. It's said that the day Cronkite closed his nightly newscast with his opinion that the Vietnam war was not winnable, that President Johnson said, "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Broadcast news is diminished since Cronkite's days, and no one fills Cronkite's shoes, but Tim Russert will be hard to follow himself.
My lasting memory of Tim Russert will be the reception his comment got when he declared after one of the later Democratic primaries that we now know who the nominee is going to be, there is no doubt. Other pundits said the same thing, days or even weeks before or after, but it was Russert's opinion that was treated as authoritative, almost official. There can be no higher praise from his peers in the news media than how they followed his lead in reporting the story.
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