Jonathan Storm: Replacing Russert a tough job for NBC
Still officially in mourning, NBC executives yesterday worked to draw up a list of replacements for Tim Russert, while most observers acknowledged that the task was impossible.
Still officially in mourning, NBC executives yesterday worked to draw up a list of replacements for Tim Russert, while most observers acknowledged that the task was impossible.
"If it wasn't for Russert, there wouldn't be any political news at NBC," said veteran Philadelphia TV newsman Larry Kane, who, with others in the business, noted that the NBC vice president and Washington bureau chief, who died Friday, basically did the jobs of three people.
Most prominent of them was managing editor/moderator of Meet the Press, where the list of most likely replacements from NBC includes Tom Brokaw, David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell. Several analysts have also mentioned PBS's Gwen Ifill.
While some bloggers and Web sites criticized NBC's extensive coverage of its news star's sudden death over the weekend, Philadelphians like Kane, and others, fondly remembered a man whose appreciation for ordinary people gave him an unusual position in the TV news business.
"He was a regular guy, whose gusto for politics and information was extraordinary," said Russert's direct competitor (at least in one role) David Bohrman, senior vice president and Washington bureau chief at CNN. "He has left a void that is not going to be filled by NBC or by anyone else."
At Gesu School, an independent Roman Catholic elementary and middle school that serves neighborhood children in North Philadelphia, they were talking yesterday about Russert's last visit in October. The newsman, a devout Catholic himself and 10-year trustee of the school, gave a speech and answered questions.
He told the students "the secret of life":
You "work hard. You laugh often. And you keep your honor. If you do those three things, you can do anything you want to do."
And he also told them how a fidgety eighth grader in Buffalo started a memorable career with the word from a nun named Sister Mary Lucille: "'Timothy, we need to find an alternative vehicle to channel your excessive energy. You have ability, but you're not using it. We're going to start a school newspaper and you're going to be the editor."
Russert never lost that energy. As an analyst, he could cover an election into the wee hours and turn up on MSNBC's Morning Joe to do some more analysis and commentary at 6:30 a.m. He prepared relentlessly for Meet the Press. Neither of those jobs may have been his most important.
"He was a great bureau chief," said Andrew Tyndall, who has been tracking TV news for 20 years while publishing the Tyndall Report. "He could sense talent and hire people and train them."
Tyndall cited Ifill, a Russert "protege" and Chuck Todd, whom Russert hired last year, as possible Meet the Press replacements. Ifill, he said, "is a really large personality and can really hold an hour of TV." Those who think Todd might be a tad callow for the role should remember that Russert was an unknown when he took over the show in 1991.
Everyone interviewed for this article liked Brokaw, 68, as a possibility, noting that David Brinkley was 61 when he reinvented the Sunday talk-show format at ABC with This Week.
Gregory, 37, another Russert hire, who recently got his own MSNBC election show, looms as a likely choice if NBC wants to go younger. And there is Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent and a 10-year Philadelphia news veteran in the '60s and '70s.
"She's a world-class questioner and one hell of a reporter," said Kane.
Though frequently mentioned, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough were given less of chance, all three seen as too obviously partisan to fill the shoes of the moderator of American politics.
Then there are the other openings. "Remember, he did my job and Wolf's job together," said CNN's Bohrman, referring to anchor and Sunday talk-show moderator Wolf Blitzer. "And he was tough to compete with at both ends."
NBC is expected to announce an interim Meet the Press replacement after Russert's funeral Wednesday. Tyndall predicted a permanent host before the end of July.
And that all-important bureau chief job?
"I don't know that there will be replacement," he said. "There could be a total shift of gravity of NBC News back to New York."