Matt Ortega

NBC News Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, a fixture of political news at the network for twenty years, suffered a heart attack and died this afternoon, reports the network.

Russert moderated the long running Sunday morning political talk show, Meet the Press, since 1991.

In memory of Russert, listen to the theme from the show he led for seventeen years:

Tim Russert discusses the electoral
college on Election Night in 2000.

Meet the Press, under the stewardship of Russert, as one commentator said this afternoon, if you wanted to be in national politics, you had to go up against Tim Russert on Meet the Press. Ezra Klein, commenting on Russert and his trademark style of interrogation, wrote:

[H]e was there, week after week, night after night, playing the bulldog against politicians in the way he thought best. [...] But for now, it’s going to be strange indeed to turn on the TV on Sundays and not hear his voice. Presumably, he’s up somewhere beyond the cloudline, hectoring God about His inconsistencies. “But Lord, in Exodus 6:12, you clearly said…”

Those Sunday mornings will never be the same again. Broadcast journalism lost a giant.