William F. Buckley Jr.: An appreciation.

Byline: Edwin J. Feulner

A media giant is leaving the national stage _ and few have noticed.

Dan Rather? Ted Turner? Rupert Murdoch? Try William F. Buckley Jr., author, columnist, magazine founder, host of one of television's longest-running talk shows _ and a man whose impact on the media is almost as large as his celebrated vocabulary.

Buckley was first in many areas and inspired a generation _ my generation _ to follow in his footsteps. Thanks to Buckley, who in 1955, when he introduced National Review, showed America there was a market for thoughtful conservative ideas, we now have a lively array of policy journals, from The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard to National Interest, Public Interest, and our own Policy Review.

Similarly, Buckley's TV show "Firing Line" showed there was a place on television for lively political talk, a lesson well understood today by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and Tony Snow, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews. In short, Buckley played hardball when Matthews was still playing kickball.

But Buckley, 74, is slowly retiring from public view. He still writes a weekly column, but he announced earlier this year that he would not give any more public speeches. Before that, he ended his 1,429-episode run of "Firing Line," the longest-running television show with the same host. And almost a decade ago, Buckley stepped down as editor-in-chief of National Review to become "editor-at-large."

It's hard to overstate the importance of National Review, which offered respectable conservative opinion against communism, big government and liberal culture at a time when the most visible conservatives were such tragic figures as Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society. Conservative intellectuals such as L. Brent Bozell, Russell Kirk and James Burnham all had bylines in National Review's first issue.