James Walter Scott

I love what the word "newspaperman" — or "newspaperwoman" — implies: someone who knows a lot but lacks pretension; someone who knows how to take names and is unafraid of kicking backsides; someone who knows truth will prove ever elusive but is damn determined to pursue it. The quintessential newspaperman for me was the late Lars-Erik Nelson. He wrote for the New York Daily News and did his best backside kicking in, of all places, The New York Review of Books. No one ever escaped his verbal scalpel.

Th0at kind of journalistic courage is difficult to find today. I’m not talking about physical courage. I’m talking mental toughness, willingness to risk. We have very few Nelsons, few I.F. Stones and Neil Sheehans. People I consider courageous arel; Murray Waas at National Journal; Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com and niemanwatchdog.org; Warren Strobel and several of his colleagues at the Dallas Morning New bureau (and also the McClatchy Washington bureau); and Seymour Hersh. And, of course, Jane Hamsher.

Jim Boyd, a 1980 Nieman Fellow, is deputy editorial page editor at the Star Tribune, Minneapolis. His writing now tends to focus on international affairs but, he says, like most editorial writers, he will take on almost any topic, if necessary.