James Warren Trautman

I love what the word "newspaperman" implies: someone who knows a lot but lacks any pretension; someone who 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 also did much of his best best backside kicking in, of all places, The New York Review of Books. Not anyone escaped his verbal scalpel if they deserved it, including The New York Times’s treatment of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.

That sort of journalistic courage is difficult to find today. I’m not talking about physical courage, which many good journalists display overseas in dangerous war zones. I’m talking mental toughness, willingness to risk. We have very few Nelsons, few I.F. Stones, few David Halberstams and Neil Sheehans. People I consider courageous are Murray Waas at National Journal (Murray Waas has shown a lifetime of such attributes.)Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com and niemanwatchdog.org; Warren Strobel at the Knight Ridder Washington bureau (soon to be the McClatchy Washington bureau); Walter Pincus and Dana Priest of the Post, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward, and Glenn Greenwald.