Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Tom Brokaw has an article in the New York Times that praises the late Tim Russert while making a really unfortunate comparison:
Tim Russert was in the next generation of broadcast journalists, and his role model was none of the above. As he often told me, Tim was a John Madden man. Madden, the large, rumpled former coach of the Oakland Raiders who became the N.F.L.'s premier television analyst, is the guy at the end of the bar whom the patrons turn to when they need some working-class wisdom.Tim filled the same role on "Meet the Press." Like Madden, he was determined -- no, he was fiercely committed -- not to let his celebrity and fat paycheck alter his South Buffalo DNA. I think he believed even a spritz of hairspray would deaden his brain cells (and who's to say he was wrong?).
He even tries to make this strained analogy:
Tim and Madden shared not just an XXL off-the-rack wardrobe but also a passion about their areas of expertise -- politics and football -- and their insights came from the playing field, not from the back of the bus or the heated comfort of the press box. Madden was first a player and then a coach and then an analyst. Tim was first a foot soldier with a law degree for Daniel Patrick Moynihan and then the senator's chief of staff and, later, a principal adviser to Gov. Mario Cuomo.So when Tim took the moderator's chair at "Meet the Press," in 1991, like Madden in the broadcast booth, he knew all the tricks on the playing field. He knew the Washington press corps was inclined to concentrate on the news of the day and move on. Even modestly gifted politicians could play that game by tailoring their answers to fit the next news cycle. On "Meet the Press," they encountered what politicians dread most -- their records. They were often startled, and stammered when Tim put on the screen their earlier statements, which were often completely at odds with their current positions. It was Tim's version of a great N.F.L. scouting report that led to a winning game plan.
Madden and Tim also shared a talent for describing the complexities of their respective fields in ways that even the casual viewer could understand. As Tim's son, Luke, put it, "When John Madden described the wishbone offense so even the nonfootball fan would get it, it was like my dad explaining the electoral college."
Now I confess to having rarely watched Russert, so I don't have much insight into his talent. A lot of people I respect had great respect for him, so I'm willing to believe that he was extremely good at what he did. Which makes the comparisons to Madden seem like damning with faint praise to me; I can only hope that Russert was better at his job than Madden is at his.
John Madden is the worst football analyst on television. He's certainly got a charming, everyman personality. He'd be a lot of fun to have a beer with and listen to his stories about the old NFL. But as an analyst, he's the Dick Vitale of football - all style and no substance. In place of Vitale's slobbering over every coach and player, Madden substitutes a gift for pointing out the astonishingly obvious: "This is where a defense really wants to stop the other team." Gosh, thanks for that insight John. I never would have guessed that.
The job of an analyst is to explain the complexities of the game to the audience in an entertaining way. I can't ever recall Madden saying anything that made me understand what was going on any better. I can't ever recall him saying anything that wasn't already incredibly obvious even to someone who never played the game. I certainly hope that Russert did a better job than that on Meet the Press; if not, the universal praise he has gotten from colleagues is merely gold plating on a piece of dung.
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Re John Madden
I haven't been watching NFL football over the last few years, having lost interest in sports, but my impression is that, at the start of his analyst career, he was quite informative but the quality of his work has deteriorated over time, probably because he's getting bored with it.
Posted by: SLC | January 1, 2009 10:07 AM
For several years, I've recorded and usually watch at least the first segment of Meet the Press, which is the segment where an actual policy maker was interviewed by the moderator, which was Russert for many years. This segment was normally about 30 minutes with only one or at most two commercial breaks, providing ample opportunity for the interviewer (Russert) to drill down beyond shallow talking points.
Russert distinguished himself in this sort of in-depth TV reporting from his competitors that provided similar shows on Sunday morning. He also distinguished himself relative to other TV journalists who reported on politics when they did extended one-on-one interviews with policy makers. Maybe it was the legacy of the show, but Russert didn't have to grovel as much to get policy makers to appear, and therefore could be more aggressive in his interview style without worrying so much about not getting future policy makers on the show. Grading on the curve, I'd give Mr. Russert a A-/B+.
When the Republicans were whining about "gotcha journalism" this past electoral season, they were referring to other journalists following Russert's method of frequently allowing a guest time to vent his current talking point, but in advance preparing a video feed that showed that person having the exact opposite position sometime in the past. Russert did not do this gratuitously, but instead used this as an avenue to get the subject to move beyond his talking points so the viewers could see how much nuance and committment informed the policy maker's positions (which usually was not much of either). From this perspective, liars, idiots, and hypocrites did not do well on his show, no surprise Palin was never a guest.
However, if I were to grade him to the level my expectations of what a journalist with his sort of access and program format should aspire to reach, I'd grade him a B-/C+. I believe Mr. Russert was a traditionalist not all that different in his personal beliefs than Bill O'Reilly. So on issues where politicians did not like to dig beyond their shallow talking points given their actual positions were absurd, they did not fear Mr. Russert. Examples would be equal rights for gays, abortion rights, torture, and church/state matters.
In these examples, the policy maker could state they believed "life begins at conception" with no follow-up questions regarding how these people thought the government should act on health-threatening issues, or birth control. Same on gay marriage, a policy maker could state, "I believe marriage is one man and one woman", with zero follow-up from Russert on how they reconciled that position while claiming they and their party was the party of freedom and individual rights. Another one was conservatives bellowing about "judicial activists" overturning "the will of the people" and their belief appeals court "justices should merely interpret the law, not make it.", which was never followed up with, "So you believe the SCOTUS should have upheld miscagenation laws that prohibited inter-racial even when 73% of Americans supported such prohibitions?".
Where he did shine was on issues that didn't conflict with his traditionalist biases. He was very aggressive in questioning policy makers on their support of the Iraq War and rationale for their position. After the invasion he was an aggressive interviewer on where they currently stood when so many criticized Bush's status quo policies while refusing to push for a withdrawal even after the 2006 election where the people clearly expressed support for withdrawing.
I hope for current and future interviewers in Russert's position to leverage the output of great bloggers, like Ed's work here. TV Interviewers are so often vacuous in their understanding issues at any depth and therefore are incapable of asking meaningful follow-up questions. Bloggers do a lot of the heavy-lifting in this area and a smart journalist would do well to take advantage by merely reading key blogs every morning. I see Keith Olberman and especially Rachel Maddow leveraging this sort of content, which is why they are both so good at fisking the absurdities of their ideological opponents. It'd be great to see journalists who are formally challenged to be unbiased, like David Gregory who is replacing Tim Russert on Meet the Press, do the same.
Posted by: Michael Heath | January 1, 2009 10:22 AM
Sarah Palin was never on Meet the Press with Tim Russert because Russert died in June, more than two months before Palin was nominated to be a VP candidate.
Posted by: Joe | January 1, 2009 10:46 AM
Joe stated:
Joe - I never claimed Palin didn't gone on "with Tim Russert". I claimed she never went on because it is my opinion that the format of the show would expose her as some combination of liar/hypocrite/idiot. Russert's death is irrelevant to her decision not to appear since:
a) Meet the Press did not go off the air after Russert's death.
b) Tom Brokaw used the same format of interviewing guests as Russert, including the "gotcha journalism" format which was the subject of that paragraph.
I stand by my point, especially given the fact that Brokaw noted on the show that Palin refused to appear though she was invited.
Posted by: Michael Heath | January 1, 2009 11:00 AM
Madden was an excellent analyst in the first 3-5 years after he stopped coaching. Unfortunately that was 1979 to 1984. Since then he has increasingly become a caricature of himself.
Posted by: mess | January 1, 2009 11:06 AM
I lost my respect for John Madden's football acumen at the end of the 2002 Superbowl, when I was astonished to hear him say the Patriots should run the clock out and go into Over Time, when they had the ball on their 17 with 1:30 to go. The illogic of this seemed mathematically obvious to me. If you don't trust your offensive not to turn over the ball in a critical situation, why even let them out of the locker room? (Mind you, there have been games in seasons past when my own Giants got more positive scoring from their defense than their offense.)
Someday, someone is going to write a book about him, titled "The Thing That Went Boom!" As a commentator, he has the verbal skills of a noisy, enthusiastic six-year old. And I almost quote, "You send out the two guys, and the one guy does this thing, then the one guy [meaning the other guy] does this thing, and boom!, then you really got something!"
I'll still take him over Phil Simms, though, who has gone whole quarters without uttering a single grammatical sentence. Not that I expect a lot from the college degree of a football player, but I would have hoped they would use some of their millions to get a little coaching in English before mis-educating the youth of the nation on TV. (Some of them do a decent job, including Terry Bradshaw, or at least I can excuse his occasional malaprops as part of his shtick.)
Posted by: JimV | January 1, 2009 12:00 PM
Frank Caliendo does a great bit about John Madden's commentary of the obvious.
Posted by: steve s | January 1, 2009 2:41 PM
Michael Heath:
Your first post made for some interesting reading. Thanks.
Posted by: Scott | January 1, 2009 4:08 PM
I wouldn't mind Madden stating the obvious so much if he didn't find it necessary to repetitiously hammer the point home. It's more like: "This is where a defense really wants to stop the other team. Because if you don't stop them here, it'll be harder to win. So you want to stop them, and you need defense to do that."
Posted by: Taz | January 1, 2009 5:08 PM
Russert is exactly like Madden, it is all an act. There was no Buffalo left in him for decades, but he knew the value of pretending that he was "Joe Plumber", another loudmouth.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | January 1, 2009 5:17 PM
Never mind the bizarre analogy of a sports announcer and someone who was supposed to be a journalist. Russert's biggest fault was what he didn't do, which was ask tough questions of the likes of Dick Cheney, and then not let him and the rest of Bush's minions off the hook when they gave their mendacious response. Anyone who has seen David Gregory operate knows we're in for more of the same. And am I the only one who thinks the program should be re-named from "Meet The Press", since it's no longer a panel of journalists asking questions?
Posted by: Raymond Minton | January 1, 2009 5:33 PM
The Russerts and the Gregorys of the world make one long for the good old days of Lawrence E. Spivak, who founded Meet the Press. There was somebody who wasn't afraid to ask tough questions of his guests and follow up questions if he wasn't satisfied with their responses.
Posted by: SLC | January 1, 2009 5:49 PM
Never really watched "Meet the Press" but learned a lot of football from John Madden. He's great to listen to if you're new to the game. Ditto for Dan Dierdorf.
Posted by: twincats | January 1, 2009 8:33 PM
If you want somebody to ask really embarrassing questions of major power brokers then hire somebody like Noam Chomsky, who doesn't operate on the assumption that "our boys know best."
Posted by: jws | January 1, 2009 8:54 PM
I have to agree with a couple of other commenters that Tim Russert may have asked "hard questions" but he never insisted on meaningfull answers.
Posted by: democommie | January 2, 2009 7:51 AM
I never saw Russert's Meet the Press, so my exposure to him was entirely his periodic political analysis on the evening news. I found it shallow, unimaginative, limited and repetitive of standard media talking points. I was not impressed, and the fulsome praise he's tended to get since his death has baffled me. Clearly, he was a nice guy--but come ON!
Posted by: gary l. day | January 2, 2009 11:46 AM
I grew up listening to John Madden, and that's how I learned the rules of football. His style might not be great for everyone, but there's a reason he became what he is. He and Pat Summerall were a great team.
Posted by: Libertarian Girl | January 5, 2009 7:53 AM