First Door on the Left

NBC’s Tim Russert dead at 58

Tim Russert

WASHINGTON - Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after a sudden heart attack at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. No details were immediately available.

Russert, the recipient of 48 honorary doctorates, took over the helm of “Meet the Press” in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 7, 1950. He was a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.[..]

Russert is survived by his wife, Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, and a son, Luke.

He will be missed.

I will miss his whiteboard on election night. Nobody could ever handle a whiteboard quite like Tim Russert.

UPDATE — Statement of Mr. Russert’s physician on the cause of his death: