Named one of the most powerful women in Texas by Texas Monthly magazine, Rena Pederson has held senior posts at the Dallas Morning News since 1973. As editor at large since 2002, she writes a weekly column for the paper's Sunday Reader section as well as profiles and enterprise feature stories. She previously served as a vice president and editorial page editor, supervising the staff and content of the opinion pages for 16 years.

Andrew Barnes, chairman of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and former chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg Times, is a native of New York City and a graduate of Harvard University where he took his degree in history.

No biography/photo currently available.

(Courtesy of the National Endowment for the Humanities)

“When you’re in a state of perplexity, sadness, gloom, elation, you look for a poem to match what you are feeling,” says Helen Vendler. She writes that “Poetry is analytic as well as expressive; it distinguishes, reconstructs, and redescribes what it discovers about the inner life. The poet accomplishes the analytic work of poetry chiefly by formal means.”

(Courtesy of the Newberry Library)

Jack William Fuller was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 12, 1946. The son of Ernest Fuller, a financial reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and Dorothy Fuller, he followed his father into journalism, beginning as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune at age 16. He received his BS degree in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1968, and also attended Yale Law School, receiving his JD degree in 1973.

Prior to joining the Akron Beacon Journal, John Dotson was publisher of the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo.

In prior positions, he was director of night operations at the Philadelphia Inquirer, transportation and circulation administration manager of the Philadelphia Daily News, and executive assistant to Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., President Sam Keel. He also worked in several editorial departments of the Inquirer.

Edward Seaton began his career in journalism as a general assignment reporter and copy editor at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. An honors graduate of Harvard College, he studied on a Fulbright grant in Ecuador and did graduate work in journalism at the University of Missouri. He was made a Knight of the Order of Christopher Columbus by the Dominican Republic for his work for press freedom, and is a recipient of Columbia's Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

Seymour Topping has had a varied career as foreign correspondent, editor, university professor and author.

He retired in 2002 as Administrator of the Pulitzer after nine years of service and was appointed San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University.

Prior to Columbia, he was a member of the New York Times for thirty years as chief correspondent in Moscow and Southeast Asia, foreign editor, deputy managing editor and managing editor from 1986 to 1987.

During his nine-year tenure as president of Columbia University, Dr. Rupp focused on enhancing undergraduate education, on strengthening the relationship of the campus to surrounding communities and New York City as a whole, and on increasing the university’s international orientation. At the same time, he completed both a financial restructuring of the university and a $2.84 billion fund-raising campaign that achieved eight successive records in dollars raised.