Henry Louis Gates Jr., is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, chair of the Afro-American Studies Department and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.

With 40 honorary degrees, Gates is a world-renowned scholar and teacher of African and African-American history and culture. He has authored seven books and written numerous essays and reviews on a broad range of African and African-American issues, including slavery, race, feminism, dialect and identity.

Sig Gissler has been administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes since 2002. A special faculty member at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, Gissler is founder of "Let's Do It Better," the school's national Workshops on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity. He is the former editor of the Milwaukee Journal. During his 25 years with the paper, he served as reporter, editorial page editor and associate editor before becoming editor in 1985.

Paul Steiger is the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and a vice president of Dow Jones & Company. The editors of the Wall Street Journal Online, the Wall Street Journal Europe and the Wall Street Journal Asia also report to him.

Mike Pride has been editor of the Concord Monitor since 1983. Prior to that, he served as its managing editor. Under his editorship the Monitor has won the New England Newspaper of the Year Award 19 times, as well as numerous national awards for excellence. The paper has been cited byTime magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the best papers in the country.

Richard Oppel has been editor of the Austin American-Statesman since 1995 and is responsible for news and editorial content.

After serving in the Marine Corps, he graduated from the University of South Florida and began his career with the Tampa Tribune. He worked for the Associated Press and the Detroit Free Press before becoming executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat in 1977, and then editor of the Charlotte Observer in 1978.

Gregory L. Moore has been editor of The Denver Post since June 2002. Prior to that, he was managing editor of the Boston Globe.

Ann Marie Lipinski was named senior vice president and editor at the Chicago Tribune in February 2001. Prior to that, she served as its vice president and executive editor.

Lipinski is a graduate of the University of Michigan. She first came to the Tribune as an intern in the summer of 1978 and rose through the ranks to senior editorial posts, including associate managing editor for metropolitan news in 1991, deputy managing editor in 1994 and managing editor in 1995.

Nicholas Lemann was born, raised and educated in New Orleans. He began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American History and Literature and was President of the Harvard Crimson.

David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor, has taught at Stanford University since 1967 and was named the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History in 1993. His many books include the 1971 Bancroft prize-winningBirth Control in America; 1981 Pulitzer Prize finalist Over Here: The First World War and American Society, and Freedom From Fear, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2000.

Jay T. Harris, the former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, is director of The Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California.