| 1. | John Hersey. | ''Hiroshima." | New Yorker. | 1946 |
| 2. | Rachel Carson. | "Silent Spring." | Book. | 1962 |
| 3. | Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein. | Investigation of the Watergate break-in. | Washington Post. | 1972-73 |
| 4. | Edward R. Murrow. | Battle of Britain. | CBS radio. | 1940 |
| 5. | Ida Tarbell. | "The History of the Standard Oil Company." | McClure's magazine. | 1902-04 |
| 6. | Lincoln Steffens. | "The Shame of the Cities," | McClure's. | 1902-04 |
| 7. | John Reed. | ''Ten Days That Shook The World." | Book. | 1919 |
| 8. | H. L. Mencken. | Scopes "monkey" trial. | Baltimore Sun. | 1925 |
| 9. | Ernie Pyle. | Reports from Europe and the Pacific during World War II. | Scripps-Howard newspapers. | 1940-45 |
| 10. | Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly. | Investigation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. | CBS. | 1954 |
| 11. | Edward R. Murrow, David Lowe and Fred Friendly. | CBS Reports television documentary ''Harvest of Shame." | CBS | 1960 |
| 12. | Seymour Hersh. | Investigation of massacre committed by American soldiers at My Lai in Vietnam. | For Dispatch News Service. | 1969 |
| 13. | The New York Times. | Publication of the Pentagon Papers. | New York Times. | 1971 |
| 14. | James Agee and Walker Evans. | ''Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." | Book. | 1941 |
| 15. | W.E.B. DuBois. | ''The Souls of Black Folk." | Collected articles. | 1903 |
| 16. | I.F. Stone. | I.F. Stone's Weekly. | I.F. Stone's Weekly | 1953-67 |
| 17. | Henry Hampton. | ''Eyes on the Prize." | Documentary. | 1987 |
| 18. | Tom Wolfe. | ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." | Book. | 1968 |
| 19. | Norman Mailer. | ''The Armies of the Night." | Book. | 1968 |
| 20. | Hannah Arendt. | ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." | Collected articles. | 1963 |
| 21. | William Shirer. | ''Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1939-1941." | Collected articles. | 1941 |
| 22. | Truman Capote. | 'In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences." | Book. | 1965 |
| 23. | Joan Didion. | ''Slouching Towards Bethlehem." | Collected articles. | 1968 |
| 24. | Tom Wolfe. | ''The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." | Collected articles. | 1965 |
| 25. | Michael Herr. | ''Dispatches." | Book. | 1977 |
| 26. | Theodore White. | ''The Making of the President: 1960." | Book. | 1961 |
| 27. | Robert Capa. | Ten photographs from D-Day. | 1944 | |
| 28. | J. Anthony Lukas. | ''Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families." | Book. | 1985 |
| 29. | Richard Harding Davis. | Coverage of German march into Belgium. | For the Wheeler Syndicate and magazines. | 1914 |
| 30. | Dorothy Thompson. | Reports on the rise of Hitler in Cosmopolitan and Saturday Evening Post. | Saturday Evening Post. | 1931-34 |
| 31. | John Steinbeck. | Reports on Okie migrant camp life for The San Francisco News. | San Francisco News | 1936 |
| 32. | A. J. Liebling. | ''The Road Back to Paris." | Collected articles. | 1944 |
| 33. | Ernest Hemingway. | Reports on the Spanish Civil War in The New Republic. | New Republic | 1937-38 |
| 34. | Martha Gellhorn. | ''The Face of War." | Collected articles. | 1959 |
| 35. | James Baldwin. | ''The Fire Next Time." | Book. | 1963 |
| 36. | Joseph Mitchell. | ''Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories." | Collection of much older articles. | 1992 |
| 37. | Betty Friedan. | ''The Feminine Mystique." | Book. | 1963 |
| 38. | Ralph Nader. | ''Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile." | Book. | 1965 |
| 39. | Herblock (Herbert Block). | Cartoons on ''McCarthyism.'' | In The Washington Post. | 1950 |
| 40. | James Baldwin. | ''Letter from the South: Nobody Knows My Name.'' | In The Partisan Review. | 1959 |
| 41. | Huynh Cong Ut. | Photograph of a burning girl running from a napalm attack. | For The Associated Press. | 1972 |
| 42. | Pauline Kael. | ''Trash, Art, and the Movies." | In Harper's. | 1969 |
| 43. | Gay Talese. | ''Fame and Obscurity: Portraits by Gay Talese." | Collected articles. | 1970 |
| 44. | Randy Shilts. | Reports on AIDS for The San Francisco Chronicle. | San Francisco Chronicle | 1981-85 |
| 45. | Janet Flanner (Genet). | ''Paris Journals'' chronicling Paris's emergence from the Occupation. | In The New Yorker. | 1944-45 |
| 46. | Neil Sheehan. | ''A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam." | Book. | 1988 |
| 47. | A. J. Liebling. | ''The Wayward Pressman." | Collected articles. | 1947 |
| 48. | Tom Wolfe. | ''The Right Stuff." | Book. | 1979 |
| 49. | Murray Kempton. | ''America Comes of Middle Age: Columns 1950-1962." | Collected articles. | 1963 |
| 50. | Murray Kempton. | ''Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties." | Book. | 1955 |
| 51. | Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. | ''America: What Went Wrong?'' Series in The Philadelphia Inquirer. | Philadelphia Inquirer. | 1991 |
| 52. | Taylor Branch. | ''Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63." | Book. | 1988 |
| 53. | Harrison Salisbury. | Reporting from the Soviet Union for The New York Times. | New York Times | 1949-54 |
| 54. | John McPhee. | ''The John McPhee Reader." | Collected articles. | 1976 |
| 55. | ABC. | Live television broadcast of Army-McCarthy hearings. | ABC | 1954 |
| 56. | Frederick Wiseman. | ''Titicut Follies." | Documentary. | 1967 |
| 57. | David Remnick. | ''Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire." | Book. | 1993 |
| 58. | Richard Ben Cramer. | ''What It Takes: The Way to the White House." | Book. | 1992 |
| 59. | Jonathan Schell. | ''The Fate of the Earth." | Book. | 1982 |
| 60. | Russell Baker. | ''Francs and Beans." | In The New York Times. | 1975 |
| 61. | Homer Bigart. | Account of being over Japan in a bomber when World War II came to an end. | In The New York Herald-Tribune. | 1945 |
| 62. | Ben Hecht. | ''1,001 Afternoons in Chicago." | Collected articles. | 1922 |
| 63. | Walter Cronkite. | CBS television documentary on Vietnam. | CBS | 1968 |
| 64. | Walter Lippmann. | Early essays for The New Republic. | New Republic | 1914 |
| 65. | Margaret Bourke-White. | Photographs following the defeat of Germany. | For Life magazine. | 1945 |
| 66. | Lillian Ross. | ''Reporting." | Collected articles. | 1964 |
| 67. | Nicholas Lemann. | ''The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America." | Book. | 1991 |
| 68. | Joe Rosenthal. | Photograph of Marines raising an American flag on Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. | For The Associated Press. | 1945 |
| 69. | Hodding Carter Jr. | ''Go for Broke.'' Editorial in Carter's Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.). | Democrat-Times | 1945 |
| 70. | The New Yorker. | ''The New Yorker Book of War Pieces." | Collected articles. | 1947 |
| 71. | Meyer Berger. | Report on the murderer Howard Unruh. | In The New York Times. | 1949 |
| 72. | Norman Mailer. | ''The Executioner's Song." | Book. | 1979 |
| 73. | Robert Capa. | Spanish Civil War photos for Life. | Life | 1936 |
| 74. | Susan Sontag. | Notes on 'Camp. | In The Partisan Review. | 1964 |
| 75. | Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. | ''All the President's Men." | Book. | 1974 |
| 76. | John Hersey. | ''Here To Stay." | Collected articles. | 1963 |
| 77. | A. J. Liebling. | ''The Earl of Louisiana." | Book. | 1961 |
| 78. | Mike Davis. | ''City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles." | Book. | 1990 |
| 79. | Melissa Fay Greene. | ''Praying for Sheetrock." | Book. | 1991 |
| 80. | J. Anthony Lukas. | ''The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick." | In The New York Times. | 1967 |
| 81. | Herbert Bayard Swope. | ''Klan Exposed." | In The New York World. | 1921 |
| 82. | William Allen White. | ''To an Anxious Friend." | In The Emporia (Kan.) Gazette. | 1922 |
| 83. | Edward R. Murrow. | Report of the liberation of Buchenwald for CBS radio. | CBS | 1945 |
| 84. | Joseph Mitchell. | ''McSorley's Wonderful Saloon." | Collected articles. | 1943 |
| 85. | Lillian Ross. | ''Picture." | Book. | 1952 |
| 86. | Earl Brown. | Series of articles on race for Harper's and Life magazines. | Life | 1942-44 |
| 87. | Greil Marcus. | ''Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music." | Book. | 1975 |
| 88. | Morley Safer. | Report for CBS television on atrocities committed by American soldiers on the hamlet of Cam Ne in Vietnam. | CBS | 1965 |
| 89. | Ted Poston. | Coverage of the ''Little Scottsboro'' trial. | In The New York Post. | 1949 |
| 90. | Leon Dash. | ''Rosa Lee's Story.'' Series in The Washington Post. | Washington Post. | 1994 |
| 91. | Jane Kramer. | ''Europeans." | Collected articles. | 1988 |
| 92. | Eddie Adams and Vo Suu. | Associated Press photograph and NBC television footage of a Saigon execution. | NBC | 1968 |
| 93. | Grantland Rice. | ''Notre Dame's 'Four Horsemen'." | In The New York Herald-Tribune. | 1924 |
| 94. | Jane Kramer. | ''The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany." | Collected articles. | 1996 |
| 95. | Frank McCourt. | ''Angela's Ashes." | Book. | 1996 |
| 96. | Vincent Sheean. | ''Personal History." | Book. | 1935 |
| 97. | W. E. B. DuBois. | Columns on race during his tenure as editor of The Crisis. | Crisis | 1910-34 |
| 98. | Damon Runyon. | Crime reporting in The New York American. | New York American | 1926 |
| 99. | Joe McGinniss. | ''The Selling of the President 1968." | Book. | 1969 |
| 100. | Hunter S. Thompson. | ''Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." | Book. | 1973 |