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.
His death was announced by Tom Brokaw, former anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” who broke into the network’s programming just after 3:30 p.m.
An NBC spokeswoman, Allison Gollust, said in an e-mail message Friday night that Mr. Russert had died of a “sudden heart attack.” His internist, Dr. Michael A. Newman, said on MSNBC that an autopsy had found that Mr. Russert had an enlarged heart and significant coronary artery disease.
Mr. Russert, who was also the Washington bureau chief and a senior vice president of NBC News, had just returned in the last couple of days from a trip to Italy, where his family had celebrated the recent graduation of his son, Luke, from Boston College. When stricken, he was recording voice-overs for this Sunday’s program.
President Bush, speaking at a news conference in Paris on Saturday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, said: “America lost a really fine citizen yesterday when Tim Russert passed away. I’ve had the privilege of being interviewed by Tim Russert. I found him to be a hardworking, thorough, decent man. And Tim Russert loved his country, he loved his family, and he loved his job a lot.”
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.
More recently, he drew criticism for his sharp — some said disproportionately sharp — questioning of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in her pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, most notably in a debate between her and Senator Barack Obama in Cleveland in February. But he asked tough questions of Mr. Obama, too, as well as any number of Republicans.
He also 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.
“He really was the best political journalist in America, not just the best television journalist in America,” said Al Hunt, the Washington executive editor of Bloomberg News and former Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal.
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.
He left government for the media world at the urging of Lawrence K. Grossman, then president of NBC News, Mr. Hunt said.
“He was intrigued by it as a career choice,” said Mr. Hunt, a close friend who first met him during Mr. Russert’s days working for Mr. Moynihan. “He absolutely set the standard for moving from politics to journalism. He proved it could be done.”
Or, as Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, told NBC on Friday: “He had done his homework, so we didn’t have to do ours. We longed to hear what his take on world events was.”
Mr. Brokaw is to host a special edition of “Meet the Press” on Sunday, which will pay tribute to Mr. Russert’s life and career. With Mr. Russert’s unexpected passing, NBC will soon be forced to confront a question with no immediately easy answer: how to replace its lead political analyst with the presidential election less than five months away.
“Meet the Press,” the top-rated public affairs program on television, is viewed by nearly four million people each Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research. As word of Mr. Russert’s death spread across BlackBerry and computer screens, tributes poured into NBC from the highest elected officials and competitors on other networks. Thousands of loyal viewers also posted tributes on media Web sites.
In a statement, President Bush described Mr. Russert as “an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades.”
“He was always well informed and thorough in his interviews,” Mr. Bush said. “And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.”
Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Clinton issued a statement saying, “Tim had a love of public service and a dedication to journalism that rightfully earned him the respect and admiration of not only his colleagues but also those of us who had the privilege to go toe to toe with him.”
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. Among his earliest “gets”: arranging an appearance a year later by Pope John Paul II on the “Today” program, broadcasting from Rome.
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 had a better political insight than anyone else in the room, period,” said Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, who was then an up-and-coming producer.
As Mr. Zucker told it Friday, Michael Gartner, Mr. Grossman’s successor as president of NBC News, went to Mr. Russert at some point in the late 1980s to ask him to be the Washington bureau chief.
“Michael came back from the meeting,” Mr. Zucker recalled, “and said he had also decided to name him the new moderator of ‘Meet the Press.’ “
“This was a guy who had no on-camera experience,” Mr. Zucker said. “Forget that he had never hosted a program. He had never appeared on television.”
He made his debut as moderator 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.”
Among those who submitted to Mr. Russert’s pointed questions (which he often set up with evidence, frequently from the subject’s own mouth, cued on videotape) were Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, John Kerry and John McCain.
During last year’s perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, Mr. Russert was put in the unfamiliar position of answering questions himself, from the witness stand. Mr. Libby had said that he first learned of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, from Mr. Russert in a July 2003 conversation. Mr. Russert denied the claim, and prosecutors have asserted that Mr. Libby concocted that account to avoid acknowledging that he had learned about her from fellow officials.
Those reporters who covered the television beat saw many sides of Mr. Russert, whether it was in a direct phone call or voice mail message sternly questioning the accuracy of a particular reference to him, or the way he would seem to melt when being asked about one of his heroes, Bruce Springsteen, who was known to receive Mr. Russert backstage at his concerts.
Off camera and away from the office, Mr. Russert was a mentor to young colleagues, a gregarious man with a rolling laugh and a roster of friends who were in his life for decades, a devoted Roman Catholic proud of his Jesuit education at John Carroll University in Ohio.
Those who were in the presence of him and his son were long struck by the closeness of the relationship. Mr. Russert was known to steal away from work during the day to greet his son upon his return from school, or to surprise him while he was caddying at a golf course in Nantucket, Mass., where the family had a home.
Four years ago, when the younger Mr. Russert was preparing to depart Washington for Boston College, several friends wondered aloud to the father how he would survive being so far away from his son.
In addition to his son, Mr. Russert is survived by his wife, Maureen Orth, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, whom he met at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, at Madison Square Garden in New York; his father, Tim Russert; and three sisters. His father is the subject of Mr. Russert’s best-selling book, “Big Russ & Me.”
Mr. Hunt, of Bloomberg News, said that in one of the last of their nearly weekly conversations, early this month, he and Mr. Russert relished the opportunity to cover this year’s presidential campaign. As his old friend recalled through tears Friday, Mr. Russert marveled, “Can you believe we get paid for this year?”
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