Tim Russert News

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Tim Russert died. I'm not sure if you've heard. But, yes, the Meet the Press moderator and dedicated D.C. journalist passed away, at a too-young 58, last week and the media has been in a frenzy since.

This is an odd write-up : To the casual viewer, cable news coverage of Sen. Edward Kennedy's death Wednesday lined up as neatly as the punch line in a joke about the alleged political agendas of those channels.

If there were still a most trusted man in America, in our cynical, irony-drenched, somebody-must-be-lying culture, it sure wouldn't be a journalist.

Too many people find the agglomeration known as the media to be biased, inaccurate, sensational, simplistic or irrelevant for a Walter Cronkite figure to stride among us today. Too many columnists, bloggers and cable channels spend their time urging folks not to believe what those other slimeballs are peddling.

In pondering Cronkite's passing, I have been thinking about the death of two other journalistic giants: Peter Jennings four years ago, and Tim Russert last year. Each unleashed plenty of end-of-an-era chatter, which makes me wonder: Is the news business changing into some alien form that betrays their legacy? Or is such shorthand simply our way of saying they set an unmatchable standard?

This past Saturday marked the one year anniversary of the death of Tim Russert .

On Wednesday night, Joe Scarborough stood in the back room at Michael's restaurant, and publicly thanked his wife, Susan, who stood a few feet away, for inspiring the evolution of his political punditry at MSNBC.