The death Saturday of Claudia Rosett takes, at age 67, not only a treasured friend and colleague but also one of her generation’s greatest journalists. She came up through the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, served a tour as its Moscow bureau chief and another as editorial page editor of its edition in Asia, where she covered, among other things, the Communist Chinese massacre at Tiananmen Square.

One of the things that made Claudia Rosett such a strong journalist — aside from her brilliance and passion for principles — was her mastery of political economy. She’d imbibed this at the knee of her father, Richard, dean of the University of Chicago’s business school and a free-market sage. At the age of seven, she took tea with Milton and Rose Friedman, to whom she served cookies. She mixed all that with a major in English literature at Yale — and her own true grit.