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.

Donald E. Graham became chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company in 1991 and chairman of the board in 1993. Publisher of the The Washington Post newspaper since 1979, Graham is a trustee of the Federal City Council in Washington, D.C., chairman of the District of Columbia College Access Program, and a member of the board of directors of The Summit Fund of Washington.

Joann Byrd retired June 2, 2003, after six years as the editorial page editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

From June 1992 to June 1995, she was ombudsman at The Washington Post, and had been executive editor of The Herald, Everett, WA, for 12 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.

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.

Tom Goldstein worked as a reporter at AP, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He was press secretary to New York City Mayor Edward Koch. Goldstein has written “The News at Any Cost,” “A Two-Faced Press” and co-authored “The Lawyers Guide to Writing Well.” He edited the “Killing the Messenger: 100 years of Press Criticism.” Goldstein is a graduate of Yale and Columbia’s law school and journalism school.

Tom Goldstein joined the Pulitzer Prize Board in 1998.

Sandra Mims Rowe is editor of The Oregonian, the largest daily newspaper in the Northwest.