Tim Russert Passes Away: Marketwatch Looks Crass

One of the best interviewers out there has died of a heart attack and he was only 58 years old.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” broadcast when he collapsed. He was rushed to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, where resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful.

I knew he was an unabashed liberal but he was of the old school where you respected the guy on the other side of the aisle even though you didn't agree with him. He usually seemed like a pretty fair interviewer from what I have seen of Meet the Press. He didn't do puff pieces and he really seemed to know his stuff when he went into the interview. You couldn't game him.

Also you could tell that he was head and shoulders above the talk-over-each other journalists at Fox News or the extremely biased reporting of people like Katie Couric or the rest of NBC news. He never seemed to ask questions like "the Iraq war is the worst failure in human history, people are dying by the hundreds of millions from Global Warming, and we are now considered by every man woman and child as the most evil empire that has ever lived. How do you feel about that?"

So it is sad to see Marketwatch run a who is the successor to Russert piece just a few hours after he died.

With Tim Russert's death on Friday, NBC (GE: General Electric Company; 29.15, +0.10, +0.3%) will need someone who is steady, reassuring, calm and analytical. David Gregory, familiar to NBC viewers for his White House coverage, should get the job. Chris Matthews should definitely not be under consideration.

I mean mourn the guys passing, talk about his legacy, and wait an appropriate period of time before you go into a "Meet the Press" hosting horse race. I think it is the height of crassness to rush out an article like this without the appropriate looking-back and reflecting period.

Marketwatch seems so caught up in the 24 hour news cycle that the guy barely hits the floor and they are already making predictions about who will replace him. Marketwatch seems to think of respected journalists like Russert as British rank-and-file troops in line formation. When one dies the other troops step to their left or right and fill in the gap.