It was unprecedented.

In the midst of a heated and historic presidential campaign, devastating tornados and floods in the Midwest, rapidly escalating gas prices, and a sagging economy, the two 24-hour cable news channels – MSNBC and CNN — bagged the “big” stories. and devoted much of Friday afternoon and Friday night to extended tributes to Tim Russert, the consummate newsman who ran NBC News’ Washington bureau as well as presiding on “Meet the Press.”

Russert had flown in from Italy Thursday night, arrived at the bureau early Friday, taped his NBC News radio show and began making notes for the next edition of “Meet the Press,” when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was 58.

Russet’s longtime colleague and friend, Tom Brokaw, broke the story on NBC and MSNBC, and for the rest of the day and evening, a parade of print and broadcast journalists from all the networks and many magazines and newspapers appeared to talk about Russert – as a great journalist, family man and friend and a devout Catholic. CNN followed suit.

Last week Russert had to put his father, “Big Russ,” about whom he wrote a 2004 best seller, in an “assisted living” home. This week, he and his wife, Maureen Orth, a print journalist, took their son. Luke, to Italy to mark his graduation from Boston College. And then this exemplary son and father died on the eve of Father’s Day.

Russert, who had a law degree. began his career on the other side, as an aide first to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Monyihan and then to New York governor Mario Cuomo. Later, he became an NBC News executive. It was after all that that he became a newsman.

But though he came late to it, according to all his colleagues and the political leaders who paid tribute to him yesterday, he was not only an extraordinary journalist, but an extraordinary man.

And that is why both his own network and its chief competitor put the news on hold for a day and celebrated the newsman.