Pumping up Brownstein

Ron Brownstein, the national political reporter based in Washington for the L.A. Times, is among the most influential of the scribes covering the presidential campaign, says Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.

Brownstein, 45, who is also a political analyst for CNN, worked for National Journal before joining the California paper in 1990 and is the author of five books (one of them, on the Republican revolution of the '90s, written with [Dan] Balz).

Kurtz's list includes Balz of the Post, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood and USA Today's Jill Lawrence. (Via Romenesko)