Goodbye Tim Russert and Thank You for Being You

I couldn't believe it yesterday when I read the Wall Street Journal alert that Tim Russert had died. "No, it can't be true," I thought. Not Tim Russert.

I never had the privilege of meeting Tim Russert, although I always wanted to, but I felt as though I knew him. Probably a lot of you felt the same way. That's part of what made Tim a great journalist. He knew how to talk with us, not at us.

For years, Meet the Press was part of my Sunday morning ritual. Wake-up, take the dogs out, get my coffee and settle in the family room to catch the show. I've joked many times that if Tim got ready to go on the air and I wasn't there, he simply couldn't go on. It wouldn't be the same without me watching.

Of course, his show was always lively and informative. As a viewer, you got real insight into politicians, political strategists and policy makers because Tim was well-prepared and he asked the tough questions. And Tim's guests knew, they better be prepared too. There'd be no dancing around the issue with fancy rhetoric when Tim was conducting the interview. He'd never let a guest get away with that.

While I respected Tim's tenacity, integrity and journalist style, it was his authenticity that made me a real fan. It's what endeared him to me. Tim came from humble beginnings and he never forgot that. It didn't matter if he was interviewing the President or talking to an average Joe. Tim was Tim. Too me it seemed as though there was always a bit of a mischievous boy underneath it all. I loved his boyish grin. And you could tell Tim absolutely loved what he did. How could that not be contagious?

Tim also never talked down to his audience. He didn't try to impress us with his intellectual brilliance – although brilliant he was. Tim was there to serve his audience by providing the best and the most credible information he could. And when he used a simple white board to illustrate the complexities of the 2004 Presidential election, boiling it down in the end to Florida, Florida, Florida – well it was amazing. Here we are in a world filled with high tech bells and whistles which get used sometimes just for the sake of using them, Tim Russert picked up a marker and a white board and that's all he needed. We got it.

Goodbye Tim, I'll miss you.

Published Jun 14 2008, 12:10 PM by Susan Wilson Solovic

Filed under: SBTV.com, Susan Wilson Solovic, Meet the Press, Presidential election, Wall Street Journal, white board, Tim Russert

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About Susan Wilson Solovic

Susan Wilson Solovic’s career in broadcast and print journalism, with a focus on small business, spans 25 years. She is an Emmy award winning corporate television producer, a former news reporter for NBC and CBS affiliates, a former featured columnist for UPI on businesswomen issues and a best-selling author of The Girls’ Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Business (published October, 2007), The Girls’ Guide to Power and Success, Reinvent Your Career: Attain the Success You Deserve and Desire; and Hanging onto the American Dream. She has been an adjunct professor of Women’s Entrepreneurial Studies at St. Louis Community College. In 2000, the Small Business Administration recognized her as a leading small business journalist. In addition to her CEO and anchor duties at SBTV.com, Susan is a frequent columnist for publications such as Enterprising Women, a frequent on-camera small business expert for Bloomberg, CNN, CNN/fn, Early Today Show on NBC, World News this Morning on ABC and is frequently quoted in Cosmopolitan magazine on career advice for young women. Susan can often be seen as a keynote speaker, emcee, panelist or moderator at many conferences such as:

National Association of Women Business Owners
Women Business Enterprise National Council
New York Times Small Business Summit
Business Marketing Association
Women Impacting Public Policy
National Women’s Business Council

Prior to leading SBTV.com, Susan created a series of satellite television programs focused on women entrepreneurs in the United States and Canada. Susan is an attorney licensed to practice in the state of Missouri and previously served as the Vice President of Corporate Marketing for ITT Commercial Finance, an international asset-based lending institution which had $28 billion in finance volume. Susan has served on numerous boards including the National Business Women’s Council, the Women Presidents’ Organization National Advisory Board of Directors and the inaugural board of directors of Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the John F. Cook School of Business, Entrepreneurial Studies program at Saint Louis University. She served as a member of the John F. Kennedy School of Government Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University until 2004. Susan holds a B.A. in history and political science from Columbia College and a JD from Saint Louis University.

Susan is a frequent guest on numerous mass media venues.