Robert Lesar

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 escaped his verbal scalpel if they deserved it, including The New York Times's treatment of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. I really miss him.

That kind of journalistic courage is difficult to find today. I'm not talking about physical courage, which many good journalists display daily in Iraq and other dangerous places. 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; Dan Froomkin at niemanwatchdog.org; Warren Strobel and several of his colleagues at the McClatchy Washington bureau).

But it remains an exclusive list. The Bush administration arguably combines the worst elements of the Nixon and Johndon. administrations in one. And yet most of the mainstream press has handled it with kid gloves, most powerfully on Iraq.