NYT: Tim Russert, 58, NBC’s Face of Politics, Dies

[DeepModem Mom]

Tim Russert, 58, NBC’s Face of Politics, Dies
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: June 14, 2008

Tim Russert, a fixture in American homes on Sunday mornings and election nights since becoming moderator of “Meet the Press” nearly 17 years ago, died Friday after collapsing at the Washington bureau of NBC News. He was 58 and lived in Northwest Washington....

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With his plain-spoken explanations and hard-hitting questions, Mr. Russert played an increasingly outsize role in the news media’s coverage of politics. The elegantly simple white memo board he used on election night in 2000 to explain the deadlock in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore — “Florida, Florida, Florida,” he had scribbled in red marker — became an enduring image in the history of American television coverage of the road to the White House....

He...leavened his prosecutorial style with an exuberance for politics — and politicians, on both sides of the aisle. And the easy way he spoke on camera belied his fierce preparation, often to the detriment of his social life. He rarely ventured out on Saturday nights....

Mr. Russert’s skill at political analysis was born of experience: he worked as a counselor to Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York in 1983-84 and for five years before that was special counsel to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. He was chosen to run Mr. Moynihan’s New York City office before he turned 30....

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With his bulky frame, thick face and devilishly arched eyebrows, Timothy John Russert Jr. was an unlikely television star. And it was not just that he was a graduate, with honors, of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, or that he was the son of a onetime garbage collector in his native Buffalo. (Even casual viewers of “Meet the Press” would learn of his passion for the Buffalo Bills football team and his strong embrace of the city itself, where on Friday flags flew at half-staff.)

When he joined NBC in 1984, it was as an executive working on special news projects....Behind the scenes, Mr. Russert’s colleagues at NBC News soon learned that he had a gift for making the most complex political machinations understandable and compelling....

He made his debut as moderator (of "Meet the Press") in December 1991. Eight years later, Bill Carter wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Russert had reinvented “Meet the Press,” which first appeared on television in 1947, “changing it from a sleepy encounter between reporters and Washington newsmakers into an issue-dense program, with Mr. Russert taking on the week’s newsmaker.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/business/media/14russert.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all#