Being on vacation during a breaking news story opens a window I’d sometimes just as soon snap shut. The news that NBC’s Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert, had collapsed and died of a heart attack on Friday afternoon didn’t reach me the way it would have if I’d been at work. If I’d been at the Tribune, I likely would have got the news via what’s known as an AP bulletin on the national or Washington wire feed. When big news happens, like a major court decision, a large rise or drop in the stock market or a death, the Associated Press puts out a one-line announcement called a bulletin. The bulletin is followed, usually within an hour and sometimes within minutes, by an abbreviated story that contains all the reporter knows about the event. What follows over the next 1 to 12 hours are a series of “write-thrus” in which the story is expanded, edited and updated with more information and background. In the event of the Russert death, someone in the newsroom (probably myself, Jeanne DePaul, my fellow dayside editor, or Craig Clohessy, the city editor) would announce it to the room. It’s a simple matter then to check the wire through the day for any other information I want.

Instead, I was at home enjoying a relaxed day of vacation. A friend called me with the news and I turned on the tube. That was about 2 p.m. By 3 p.m. I’d overdosed on broadcast and cable channel navel gazing. MSNBC went all Russert practically all day. Everyone from Keith Olbermann to Tom Brokaw waxed poetic about their fallen colleague, heaping praise upon him so lavishly I couldn’t help but wonder what Tim Russert would have thought about the Tim Russert coverage. I think he would have found it all a bit much. Or a lot much.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great respect for Russert’s contributions to the field of journalism and politics. His background as a lawyer prepared him well for the cross examinations his guests sometimes endured on “Meet the Press.” But NBC, and to a certain extent CNN as well, stumbled badly when they allowed this story about their friend’s death to be treated as a news story of such import that it required hours upon hours of coverage and endless teary tributes. It didn’t.

Tim Russert’s death is a tragedy for his family and a loss to the world of political journalism, but it is not of earthshaking importance to the rest of the world. It’s a sad day for journalism when the death of one of our own becomes more important than the flooding of a major portion of Iowa or any of a dozen news events that happened on Friday, June 13, 2008. When I finally tired of the laudatory coverage, I turned off broadcast and cable news, never hearing a thing about the levee break in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

In this case, NBC news badly needed the wise counsel of its Washington bureau chief. I like to think Russert would have told them the correct way to handle this event: 1 hour to the initial story, top-of-the-hour updates and a 1-hour tribute later that night or within the following week. Unfortunately, his NBC colleagues were grieving Tim Russert too hard to think … well, like Tim Russert.

I realize administrators are always looking for some way to save lives at graduation time. Every year high school kids drink and drive to celebrate their milestone and every year some of them die. I get that.

But seriously, the California school officials who lied to kids about some of their classmates dying in a car wreck and then waited hours — hours! — to tell them it was all made up were just crazy. Did no one speak up in those planning meetings to suggest that this was incredibly cruel?

Yes, I’m sure it got the point across in a new and revolting way, but ask yourself how you felt when you got the news someone close to you had been killed in a car wreck or murdered or killed in some other sort of accident. I’ve gotten that sort of news in all three instances and if someone had come along later and told me it was all a well-thought-out hoax, I would have been angry beyond reason. And I never would have spoken to that person again.

The school officials can defend this all they want, but they’d have more than some explaining to do if, in the hours that separated the students getting the news and then getting told it was a hoax, one of the bereaved students had killed herself or himself. Not that kids are known to be impulsive like that or anything. Organizers would never have forgiven themselves.

Photo: Oceanside Unified Schools superintendent Larry Perondi, left, talks about an anti-drunken-driving program designed to scare jaded high school students into not driving drunk, as El Camino High School junior Michelle Molin, looks on during an interview in Oceanside, Calif., June 11.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0At5UCaIB0 340 283]
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One of my favorite blogs these days is one offered by Men’s Health magazine. Eat This, Not That is a nifty list of the best (and worst) in food, from fine dining to home cooking and everything in between. The latest list is for the eight healthiest supermarket food picks.

It was from Eat This, Not That I learned about the immense number of calories and sodium in some of the chain restaurants’ most popular entrees. For instance, did you know that the Quiznos Turkey Bacon Guacamole Large Sub with Cheese and Reduced-Fat Ranch Dressing contains nearly 50 grams of fat and more than 4,500 mg of sodium? I didn’t until I read the blog post. The one that made my eyes pop was Romano’s Macaroni Grill Chicken Portobello. Eat that and you’ll have consumed 7,300 mg of sodium and 66 grams of fat.

One of my favorite Eat This, Not That entries was for the 20 Worst Foods in America. Warning: Don’t read it before you go out to eat. It’ll spoil your appetite.

The world became a little less funny today. Harvey Korman, one of the funniest human beings on the planet and a longtime co-star of “The Carol Burnett Show” died in Los Angeles at the age of 81.

Korman, Burnett, Tim Conway and Vikki Lawrence were sort of a magic combination — a deliriously funny ensemble who could crack each other up with the raise of an eyebrow. My favorite Korman role was when he played opposite Burnett as Ed and Eunice Higgins of “The Family.”

I didn’t get to see much of “The Carol Burnett Show” when it was new. It ran from 1967 to 1978, which means it debuted when I was 5 years old. In elementary school, I longed to watch it, but it was on at 10 p.m. on Saturday nights and that was long before my bedtime. It was torment to lie in bed and listen to my parents howling with laughter in the living room. The only time I got in on the action was when I stayed overnight with my friend, Carol, whose mother let us stay up and watch the entire show. By the time I hit junior high, I was old enough to stay up, but usually had other activities planned. In the days before VCRs and DVRs, that meant missing the show.

Of course, syndication and then DVD sales breathed new life into the show and I’ve since seen nearly every episode. They’re as funny now as the first time they aired, and the talent of Harvey Korman is a part of the reason why.

Goodbye Harvey Korman or, as Carol Burnett would sing:

I’m so glad we had this time together,
Just to have a laugh, and sing a song.
Seems we just got started and before we knew it
Came the time we had to say, ‘So long.’