By all accounts , outside of his work as a journalist ( agreed, debatable), Mr Russert was a genuinely nice guy. His death was unexpected, tragic even, and a grim reminder of our mortality.

So I'm thinking the reaction was had some aspects of "Wow, that could have been me " from his colleagues. Perhaps the deification as you put it comes from a subconscience desire to say nice things in a vain hope that the same courtesy would be returned if it happened to them.

Or it was a slow news cycle. Your choice . In any case he never impressed me as a particularly probing questioner either , not horribly vapid and ineffectual like Blitzer, but passable. However, he wasn't a complete asshole and he never let his success go to his head. That counts for something.

Tim Russert was an indisputably good guy. But the mainstream media is going extinct.

Furthermore, Russert's vision was based on movement and he had a separate brain which controlled his hindquarters.  And he had useless, two-fingered forelimbs.  It's really no wonder he lost the evolutionary coin flip. 

So thats where he ended up.

Hope the NYT has a better line than the Texans.