museum

Russert’s Relics at the Newseum

By Gary Tischler

December 2009

Russert at the Newseum - Photo by Maria Bryk/Newseum

Not everyone loves the Newseum, the large, glassy building and celebration of all things media on Pennsylvania Avenue. Some people knock it for charging a hefty admission price, others rap it for being there at all, that it’s too commercial, too big and unnecessary, that it can’t possibly succeed in this climate against all the free museum goodies on the National Mall.
 
Tourists, on the other hand, seem to find things of interests here in the land newspapers, television, radio, the Internet, photography and magazines. And anyone connected in any way with newspapers or reporting, that great shuddering beast called the media will find in the museum’s exhibitions, both large and small, the idea of news gathering and delivery as an honorable, absolutely necessary and sometimes even noble profession being kept alive.
 
A keen example of that is the current (and very small) exhibition with a long title: ”Inside Tim Russert’s Office: If it’s Sunday it’s Meet the Press,” a loving, detailed recreation of the office of the man who made the weekly interview show, which he took over in 1991, into a must-see occasion for political junkies, news professionals, and anyone interested at all in the issues of the day and their political impact and meaning.
 
The show — made up of items donated by NBC News and by Maureen Orth, Russert’s widow, and son Luke — captures the essence of the work-place of a work-horse, and a working news professional. Backed up with videos of some of Russert’s most famous interviews, and intimate, warm mementos of his personal life, the exhibition presents a man in full in a very small space — not an easy thing to do.
 
What separated Russert from his peers in the television media news world was his objectivity, his hard-driving, hard-working ethos, his obvious love for what he was doing, and, because he didn’t exactly separate his work from his persona, his humanity.
 
Television anchors especially — men and women both — tend to put on a persona, a part. Russert was what you saw and heard.
 
All of those are evident here — the family pictures that involved him as son, husband, father, and as a kind of helpless mensch — the book case full of tomes about history, biography, a desk with a drawer full of baseballs, the chalk board on which he had strongly scribbled FLORIDA, FLORIDA, FLORIDA on election night 2000. There is sports memorabilia aplenty, especially about the Buffalo Bills, a team he adored with all the devotion of a local sports nut nurtured from childhood.
 
There are letters and writings from his son as a young schoolboy, pop culture items, long notes he wrote in preparing for an interview with President George W. Bush, an interview, incidentally, conducted in the midst of the increasingly unpopular Iraq war, which was perhaps the fairest and toughest interview on record with this president.
 
He was a fixture on the show, made it into an image of himself, a tough act to follow. Even David Gregory and Tom Brokaw, now on a ponderous journey to find the elusive American Character, have not given us any reason to forget Russert since his death last year.
 
There’s the book he wrote about his father, there’s a picture of the Russert family meeting the Pope, there is Russert with the late Senator Pat Moynihan, for whom he worked prior to moving on to television.
 
A young man and his girlfriend were looking a long time at the top of Russert’s desk, filled with a notepad, backed up by a computer, with a load of pencils, with newspapers and magazines. “See,” the boy said, “that was an honest guy.” It’s a working desk, organized but not exactly tidy, somewhat like the man himself. It’s a full eclectic space, which give the appearance of a desert island atmosphere, in the sense that if Russert had ever become marooned by himself, this is the stuff he’d be surrounded by.
 
Signs of Catholic faith are everywhere, reminding you yet again that in all his years on “Meet the Press” you never knew how he felt about abortion either through his choice of questions or tone. But you could picture him as an embracer, because that office is a showcase of eclecticism, in reading, in working style, the habits that a lifelong curiosity acquired for him.
 
In a word much used and abused today, Russert had a passion for his work. More than that, he absolutely loved politics and politicians, not in the way of a naïve crush, but in the way of understanding what it took to be in politics and the political process. He was the man who lit up politics with his question and curiosity.