By Annie Loyd, Publisher - One Planet magazine
June13, 2008
Today a great man has made an untimely transition from this world to the "other." Listening to all recount his exceptional life brings so many memories home to be revisited.
Today, at the young age of 58, journalist, host of the award winning and longest running Sunday news broadcast chow on television, Tim Russert, collapsed while at work in the NBC News Studio, and later died.
He had just returned form a trip to Italy with his wife Maureen and his son Luke who had just graduated from Boston College. Tim was a man I had great respect for. I loved his enthusiasm for politics for seeking out the deeper story. To conduct an interview in the manner I which he successfully accomplished his journalistic endeavors takes exceptional research, intuition, experience, desire and a willingness to think beyond the usual framework.
I love great journalists. Watching, listening and observing a great journalist is like watching an exceptional artist paint, a prima ballerina dance, listening to Pavarotti perform. It is an experience I am in awe of. A well conducted interview leaves you with wanting more, with a desire to dig deeper into the story, the person, the event, into yourself. For a great journalist has an ability to "bring the story home" to make a story that appears to be unrelated to our individual lives relevant, engaging and essential for us to explore in greater detail.
The service an exceptional journalist like Tim Russert provided to our lives, our community our country, to the world was this ability to open doors to other perspectives, uncover the sometime uncomfortable and occasionally murky details with relevance, integrity and grace. His style is to be extolled, valued and emulated.
Furthermore, to learn of the gracious and stupendous man he was - honoring and supporting his hometown of Buffalo, New York, his pride of his Catholic roots and the love he demonstrated to his family, friends and colleagues makes who he was as a journalist even more compelling.
