remembering tim russert

by Jeremy P. Jacobs

Published: June 19, 2008

“Never let them intimidate you. If someone tries, do me a favor and work just a little harder on your story… Make your story a little better.”
- David Halberstam

For the better part of a week, I have struggled to put into words the impact Tim Russert’s death has had on me and, more importantly, on journalism. Words have consistently escaped me but Halberstam’s have been going through my head on repeat.

When I became a reporter and (eventually) found myself in situations where I was charged with asking important people questions, I realized that Russert, like Halberstam, was fearless. Russert not only held his own against some of the greatest minds and biggest personalities in the political world, but he often handed it to them. Always rooted in fact, Russert personified journalistic responsibility of holding public officials accountable. And, most importantly, he took that responsibility seriously - supporting every charge with careful due diligence.

Russert never let anyone intimidate him.

But there was another reason why Russert always stood out and it explains why his death has had a profound impact on me and has shaken the landscape of political journalism. In an age where journalism, and particularly Washington journalism, is hyper-competitive, self-indulgent and even conniving, Russert shone through as authentic. To be sure, Russert was just as concerned with his on-screen brand as any of the other reporters in town. But unlike other reporters, viewers always believed Russert was working for them, not for himself - because he was.

With journalism moving online faster than pretty much anyone can comprehend, the industry is struggling to map out the differences between good journalism and online blogging or citizen reporters. And there are no answers yet. But a large part of the discussion in newsrooms and in journalism schools focuses on ethics and some sort of journalism code that separates journalists from the others. The idea being, simply, the journalists abide by a higher code as gatekeepers to information.

But whenever this high-minded discussion or seminar begins, I am reminded of one of my first mentors, William Woo. Bill Woo was the first editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that wasn’t part of the Pulitzer family. I always envied him because he had my dream job: he floated between bureaus, writing editorials on issues and values that he believed were important. In the latter part of his career, he frequently wrote about his family and the lessons he learned from his sons, Thomas, Bennett and Peter.

Under pressure to make the paper more money, Bill resigned in 1996 and took a position teaching journalism at Stanford, where I met him. I e-mailed Bill when I was considering going into journalism and wanted to ask him some questions. He welcomed me with a big smile and, when I began writing a weekly column for the school paper, Bill met with me every week to brainstorm and then review the column afterwards. He was always engaging, never pretentious and always encouraging.

It wasn’t until we had settled into a routine that Bill told me he was dying from cancer. In fact, Bill e-mailed me to set up our weekly meeting just days before he passed away.

Bill had a unique perspective on journalism ethics that seems to have fallen by the wayside but that I hope Tim Russert will force all in the industry to remember again. Bill didn’t believe in journalism ethics. He didn’t believe an individual’s ethics could be compartmentalized between how they behaved at work and otherwise.

“Fundamentally,” he once wrote in his weekly column to his students, “my philosophy comes from a conviction that journalism grows out of and is part of life, rather (as some journalists seem to think) than that life is a part of journalism….”

“The ethics,” he went on, “that should govern journalism are the very ones they learned by the time they were six years old: Tell the truth, minimize harm, treat people with respect, be fair, and so forth. Naturally, no one can do this all of the time, but if you go through life–and journalism or banking or whatever–trying to follow these rules, you will end having lived an ethical life, which ought to be the point anyway.”

Tim Russert did just that and it shone through his reporting and his relationships with his son, his wife, his father and his coworkers. And the country is worst off having lost him - and Bill Woo - because young journalists won’t have them to seek advice from and, more importantly, because they were great people.

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