The bulk of the criticism directed at my “comics needs Tim Russert” piece is that, well, yeah, it does, but it needs a boatload of other things before such a figure would be of any use at all. A readership that’s aware of and interested in the issues, for example. For that matter, a consensus on what the important issues are. A level of parity between publishers, distributors, retailers, and readers, through which an interchange of ideas might actually have an effect on the implementation of policy. In other words, for there to even be the possibility of a Tim Russert type in comics, comics needs the type of civil-society infrastructure you find in the American polity.
Needless to say, we’re pretty far away from that. (Babar at Simply Comics makes these points quite well–thanks to Dirk Deppey for the link.) But I’m aware of all that–the Tim Russert angle was, in its way, a fantasy based on a theoretical comics industry where such a civil infrastructure exists, where such values are shared and agreed upon, where an interview that exposes an influential figure as honest or intelligent or a bunko artist might actually make a difference to the people who consume the art that figure produces.
(It’s also worth noting that many people have responded by saying that Russert really isn’t so great. (Steven Grant, for example, isn’t a Russert fan, but agrees with the basic point I was making, even if he sees (as I do) how difficult it’d be to create such a figure.) And that’s fine–the point was not that we need TIM RUSSERT, but that a dedicated, intelligent, talented, doggedly determined interviewer seen as a necessary destination by the movers and shakers in the business would be good for said business. You’re welcome to substitute Bob Schieffer, or Georges Stephanopolous and Will, or the people on Fox News Sunday, if you’d like; it’s that Sunday-morning talk-show framework that I’m referring to, not one particular journalist.)
(UPDATE: I also want to state for the record that, obviously, there’s a big difference between hard-news journalism and entertainment journalism, as well there should be. There should always be a place, a big place at that, for hyping upcoming projects and having friendly, fannish interviews with creators. But I think even there we folks who write about comics could do better than we sometimes do; and I think at a certain point we do need to do serious reporting and interviewing, even if this is “just” an entertainment industry. Just by way of a for instance, New Line risked its own bankruptcy by financing a three-film Lord of the Rings trilogy, so in addition to reading interviews with Sean Astin and Miranda Otto, I think it’s an objective good to have interviews with the studio heads explaining what they were thinking. (I also think it’s fair to ask creators to justify the work that they’re doing and the way that they’re doing it; though on a much smaller scale, these are important decisions, too, and I’d think that many creators would welcome the opportunity to talk about them.))
(UPDATE 2: It occurs to me that the parody bits in the original post come across as very harsh toward the folks who conducted and/or participated in the interviews they’re based on, and that really wasn’t my intent. I don’t know them from Adam, so it’s certainly nothing personal, and hell, it’s not even meant as being indicative of the average level of their work. It’s just commentary on what I see as some specific weaknesses of the current state of comics journalism, particularly interviews. I thought I should clear that up.)