It’s on the front of the NYT’s right now, but no details yet. He was 58 years old.
Update [2008-6-13 15:52:39 by BooMan]: From wiki:
Early reports state that Russert died of an apparent heart attack while recording a production track in Washington, D.C. on June 13, 2008, a day after returning from vacation in Italy. Reports also say he was returning from Boston, where he was celebrating his son’s graduation from Boston College with his family and dog Rover.
Tom Brokaw reported live on NBC and MSNBC at 3:43pm EST that Russert collapsed in the NBC News Bureau in Washington while managing some audio footage.
Went to MSNBC, nothing on there. NYT is only place I saw it. Is it true?
MSNBC here.
Tom Brokaw just broke the news on MSNBC.
I think I hear Brian Williams speaking now…
NYT reports that he has died.
Oh. My. God.
58. Sigh.
His poor father…
Wow, this has been quite a day.
Yes, and on Father’s Day weekend.
…no amount of money can fill that void. I feel badly for his entire family, but especially his Dad. Parents are not supposed to bury their kids, no matter how old they are.
I know this is life, and it happens, but still. This is very, very shocking and sad.
And didn’t Russert write a book lauding his father? That’s really sad.
This sort of thing makes me increasingly nervous, because let’s face it, I’m not that much younger than Russert (five years), I have a family history of heart disease and I’m packing a lot more pounds than I ought to be. And to top it all off I have a desk job that doesn’t encourage me to be active (Although when it comes to stress I’ll take my job over Russert’s any day.)
I’m sorry to see him go. We often disagreed with him here on the tubes but still, it’s never the sort of thing you want to see happen. And who knows what he might have done had he lived to see the Obama administration.
R Kelly gets off, Des Moines gets flooded, and Tim Russert passes on.
Hell of day.
Very sad for his family and friends.
Tom Brokaw is speaking off the cuff right now….emotional.
They brought in Tom Brokaw for this or is he regularly at MSNBC? (I thought he was only around for commentary on election night?)
I guess they brought him in. He’s not usually on MSNBC unless it’s election commentary.
Much, much too young. His family must be devastated. Our thoughts, prayers and deepest condolences should be with his family.
So, so sad.
here’s the link to MSNBC’s article and eulogy.
added: this is shocking news and my heart goes out to the family. i can’t even imagine what they’re going through…
I was looking forward to seeing his coverage in the fall of the election. Wow. There’s an interesting conversation at Seesmic about this.
Sincere condolences to his family.
Gawd. This father’s day is gonna be mighty tough for his family and friends. He wrote a book on his dad who survives him. There can be nothing worst for a parent.
My condolences to all.
Agreed. Condolences to all family and friends for this.
Condolences to his friends and family. Much too young, and what a horrible time for it to happen.
so if ann coulter had just dropped dead, how long would we have to wait before we could sing ding dong the witch is dead? is there like a mathematecal algorithym to nice guy dies….wait 5 days before criticising….bitch dies….wait 5 minutes before criticising. we criticise the media….the media is people….people who just arent doing their job….this dying thing sets us back cause we cant criticise the media now. it kinda sucks,
can we replace him with rachel maddow?
Don’t I wish. I just know they’re going to move Tweety up instead…
tweetys health isnt so good either
it would be nice to see a young female lesbian up there above the glass ceiling.
at least i think she is a lesbian
Not understanding you at all on this. Tim Russert was a journalist. Couletgist is…I cannot use the term I normally would out of respect for the women here. She is anything but a journalist or even human. If she dropped dead, I would throw a cocktail party just like I did when Ronald Reagan died.
wtf is going on here? all of a sudden russert’s an icon of impeccable media credentials and gravitas? seeing some of the “gushing” going on in the msm, as well as the internet, you’d think he was edward r. murrow reincarnate …that “honesty and integrity” thing aside.
he was the “go to” guy for cheney and libby, and the reich wing for years…just in case you forgot.
this man who was instrumental, and firmly in the midst of, the valerie plame outing, who fought tooth and nail to avoid having to give testimony in the case because it would harm his relationships with other sources?…one small step up the ladder from fair and balanced faux news, who just hired huckabee as a political commentator for their election coverage, btw.
my condolences to his family, and friends, but l will not elevate him to any status beyond the opportunistic hack that he was. may he RIP.
one curmudgeon’s view, ymmv.
guess l’ll haTim Russert Had…don’t know where that came from…? to me.
I agree dada. I’m personally neutral on his death but feel sorry for his family. However as you pointed out he was nothing but a hack and especially that Plame involvement-he did the media no favors, advanced no real reporting or journalist integrity and was part of the overall problem with the media.
Looks like this is going to turn into a Ronald Reagan syndrome of reporting-where Ronnie was made out to be Saint Ronnie by the ‘media’. Timmie is going to become Saint Timmie and no fair and balanced reporting of his ‘achievements’ will not be heard. I see a media orgy coming on for the next several days(or even more possibly)
Just because he died doesn’t mitigate him being part of the media who helped advance the lies leading to war or anything he may have reported make that not reported on to keep the public in the dark on way too many important stories.
I don’t want to see him savaged in the media neither do I want to see him elevated to some godlike status he doesn’t deserve.
You may have your quarrels with but Russert was as good as it got in the MSM
I also submit that the standards are different in what’s left of the MSM
Russert did his damnset to not reveal is personal politics and to ask the question most wanted answered on either side
Mostly I feel awful for his dad, Maureen and Luke who were robbed of a lot of time from a basically good man, father, husband, and son.
But that’s the whole problem Andrew about him being ‘as good as it got’ in msm..certainly he was no idiot like chris matthews and he occasionally had decent questions and even follow-ups but not enough to be considered anything but part of the problem no matter what the standards have become for the msm.
And I’m not saying he was in the Fox ‘news’ category just that he didn’t do much to rock the boat or do any or little insightful reporting.
I don’t think he saw it as his job to rock the boat in a way you were looking for. Success for him, as he said many times, was to make the interviewee squirm, but not to let his audience, right or left, know his own leanings. It was an important principle he took from many journalists before him who he held in higher regard than himself.
For him that’s what someone in his job in the MSM was supposed to do. That was his choice and he executed it well. And the MSM has they hugest impact on most people whether we like it or not.
Andrew, we will just have to disagree on how we see what Russet did or accomplished. When I say rock the boat I didn’t mean he should have particularly some kind of loose cannon journalist(although that’s not always a bad thing)but as you said to make people squirm…however he didn’t do that near often enough and many times wasted the squirm factor on questions that weren’t that important while letting the important questions go unasked.
I kinda think we’re saying the same thing here it’s just a matter of degree in how we see what he did.
I think it’s just the shock of it all. You just didn’t expect to him to literally drop dead. And knowing how he really revered his Dad, and to have his Dad outlive him…I just think a lot of people relate to that. Esp. if you’re a caregiver, even long-distance (like my Mom–my grandmother lives a few states away, but all of her affairs are taken care of by my Mom; I pitch in where I can). Sure, he was had more resources than most, but the money–while it helps, no doubt–is only part of the story.
I think in the coming days, people should really assess his career. Don’t try to deify him. Already, Tweety has said something along the lines of Russert being sold on the war because he was afraid of nuclear weapons–that he was a patriot, loved his country, yada, yada–and that’s the type of person he was.
To me, that’s thin cover. Russert, of all people, should have been able to suss that out. He was smart. He should know a con when he smells one.
But this moment really does not seem to be the best moment. And I do mean that with the absolute, greatest respect that I have of you, because I do understand the flip side of this, too.
thank you dada. I thought maybe I was going crazy there for a minute. My condolences as well, but asking tough questions? hardly.
Condolences to the family.
However, Timmah! was not in the same league as Murrow, Cronkite, Severide, etc.. so lets not cannanize him just yet.
Maybe they can change Softball w/ Tiim Russert to Hardball w/ Keith or Rachel.
the falling curmudgeon,
-plummet
I will miss him and I am sending warm thoughts of Love and Healing to the his family and friends.
Unfortunately in this day and age politics is war. It doesn’t need to be that way but Republicans have turned it into the daily battlefield it is. If their side wins in November they get SCOTUS. They continue getting people killed in preemptive wars. They allow poisoning of the environment. They permit renditions of the innocent to black holes in Syria. Russert carried their water for them. He was one of their foot soldiers. He was a pernicious enabler of the agenda of The Right. As in any war the forces of good must hope the hostilities end soon and peacefully. Until that happens there is no shame in feeling something positive at the passing of one of the enemies.
Oh Christ. The man was a lifelong Democrat. If he carried water for the right during the Bush era it was because as Washington Bureau Chief he needed the access and the scoops, not because he was an enemy of the left.
He was a decent fellow in a deeply corrupt and corrupting system.
I have plenty of criticisms of Russert as a journalist. But he wasn’t my enemy.
But I thought he voted for Bush…
Gore had a story about how after the election, they were together for some reason, shaking hands. After Russert shook hands with Gore he went down to shake hands with Bush, and when he thought Gore wasn’t looking, he flipped back his lapel to reveal a Bush pin.
Man, crazy, crazy news. I feel awful for the Russert family. They live down the road from my DC Mt Pleasant neighborhood in Rock Creek Park with a residence on Klingle Road. Tim was a long advocate of saving the road which is a very controversial local DC road closure issue that has been around forever. It could be fitting that last week, the DC City Council voted money to keep the road closed and approved funding to build more bike trails in the park.
The local alternative magazine, City Paper writer Loose Lips already suggested naming the new trails after Russert. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/06/13/the-tim-russert-memorial-klingle-valley
-recreational-trail/
Here is FAQ about the road
http://www.klinglevalley.org/faqs.htm
Booman, you hit on the nail with Tim. He was not a bad guy out to get progressives like so many other “fake slanted media” guys, I can respect that, even though he did not elevate journalism like some before him but he did not take it downward. His peers do that dramatically every day. This is my opinion of evaluating Russert in his craft and he was without doubt a honorable, genuine public figure.
It is not his fault that Meet the Press interviewees are trained by staff to lie because that is what pays in politics more so than real honesty.(not the George W Bush coke memory)
However, I did turn on the cable shows(CNN,MCNBC,Fox) and before you know it all these pundits are having superlative contests mourning his media career. Russert’s death is terribly cruel to his loved ones, but the talking heads end up casting him in higher, elevated regard than some libs, who might see Russert’s legacy as Valerie Plame and providing a forum for Cheney’s pro war propaganda lies because his death was so personally tragic to them.
I think it is the natural reaction of the grieving process to those that knew him personally and professionally quite well. Listening to Brokaw announce his death while fighting back tears in his stoic, subtle way shot chills through my body. He kept his cool but I knew he was dying inside.
I will poor some out for Timmy tonite and I hope everyone pays closer attention to the destruction of Eastern Iowa right now. I am going to write a small diary about it. RIP Timmy.
Please do write that diary. Thank you. It seems like half of Iowa is flooded–and I think I heard it being described as a 500-year weather event–but that’s all that I know. Is this nature? Or are some of the problems man-made?