What took Hollywood so long? Tim Russert died on June 13th and they're only just now announcing plans to make a movie about his life? On July 2nd? Come on, people, that's 19 days. Used to be a movie like that would get announced under a week after the tragedy. Summer must be making everyone lazy.

At left is the cover of the July issue of the conservative monthly magazine Newsmax. Notice anything collar-looseningly embarrassing about it? Not to worry! Despite featuring the late Tim Russert as the primus inter pares of electoral opinion-makers, Newsmax assures its readers that it had no choice but to run with…

NBC newsman Tim Russert died of a heart attack more than two weeks ago, but that doesn't mean that it's too late for desperate flacks to try piggybacking on the man's death in order to snatch a little media coverage for their most marginal clients. For example, here's a question you've probably been asking yourself…

Everyone is complaining that Sunday's Tom Brokaw-hosted Meet the Press was too boring. ("A little too much comity!" -Alessandra Stanley. "The Most Boring Meet the Press Ever!" -Jossip.) Is that bad? We didn't watch it, but we're still going to say "no." Look, Tim Russert, may he rest in peace, was a fantastic…

Portfolio media reporter Jeff Bercovici cornered blogstress Arianna Huffington at a party and interviewed her. He asked, awkwardly, about Tim Russert. As you may recall, Arianna did not like the deceased newsman. She devoted a great deal of time and energy to criticizing his interview style, guests, questions, and…

When Meet The Press host Tim Russert died, NBC held the news so it could inform Russert's family first. An employee at Internet Broadcasting Services, which provides web services for some of NBC affiliates, went ahead and updated Russert's Wikipedia page anyway. Then the New York Times saw the update and broke the…

Wow, media baroness Arianna Huffington really knows how to lay on the cloak and dagger stuff. You'll recall how the recent death of NBC newsman Tim Russert, followed by the Huffington Post publisher saying very little about him, reminded everyone that Russert and Huffington had a big, 15-year feud involving a …

So the guy who posted early news Tim Russert's death to Wikipedia? He's been fired by the NBC News Web contractor that employed him, because the network had been trying to notify Russert's family before breaking the news. In fact, according to the Times, the network waited roughly an hour before putting word of the …

In a lucky move for NBC and fans of Meet the Press, veteran newsman Tom Brokaw is stepping up to replace Tim Russert as the show's moderator-at least through the election-starting next Sunday. "The news was announced on the program today, a little over a week after the death of Tim Russert. A lot has been said in…

So the Post has posted the Page Six item Keith Olbermann was so worked up about yesterday, and it does indeed say Hardball host Chris Matthews "seemed" to be talking about a strategy for landing Tim Russert's job at a memorial event for the NBC personality, and that Olbermann is threatening to quit if he doesn't get…

It's a tangled web. Liberal-ish MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews hates liberal convert blog-runner Arianna Huffington because of a feud between Huffington and center-liberal deceased NBC journalist Tim Russert, whom Matthews idolized (and who never cared for Matthews). Why? Where did this all begin? It all started with a…

So. As we noted this morning, blog mistress Arianna Huffington didn't weigh in on the unexpected death of departed Meet the Press host Tim Russert until well after everyone else, and once she did, she didn't have much to say. Because of the old axiom about how much one should say when one doesn't have anything nice to…

Tim Russert died. I'm not sure if you've heard. But, yes, the Meet the Press moderator and dedicated D.C. journalist passed away, at a too-young 58, last week and the media has been in a frenzy since. Jack Shafer at Slate (among many others, I'm sure) feels that the coverage is a bit overdone. Yes Russert was by all…

A half-hour before the news broadcast on NBC, a Wikipedia user hailing from IP address 66.187.200.74 updated NBC's Tim Russert's page to report the newsman's death. Scooped by the world's most authoritative guide to Idaho wine? How embarrassing for NBC. How worrisome for one of its contractors. See, the IP address…

We probably shouldn't be surprised to see a very brisk (and rather macabre) trade in Tim Russert memorabilia on eBay. Five days after his sudden death—and amid a non-stop stream of coverage about his passing—there's plenty of merch to choose from, including dozens of copies of the late Meet the Press host's book Big…

Wikipedia beat everyone else to the news of Tim Russert's death last Friday (see screen capture here: the hive-minded encyclopedia reported the event at 3:01 p.m EST., about a half hour before Drudge linked to a short New York Post announcement). According to the Wikipedia's "revisions," the person who reported this…

The late Tim Russert initially refused to host Meet the Press because, in his words, he was "ugly." Sad! He just looked like a regular fat dude to us, no grosser in appearance than plenty of other fat guys you might see on television any night of the week, as SNL cast members or wacky sitcom neighbors. But Doree…