BOCCARDI TO HEAD PULITZER BOARD

By: Jim Rosenberg A.P. President To Succeed Edward Seaton


NEW YORK -- (AP) Louis D. Boccardi, president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, has been elected chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced Monday.

Boccardi has been a member of the Pulitzer board since 1994. He succeeds Edward Seaton, editor in chief of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, who retired from the board. Members of the board can serve a maximum of nine years.

Columbia University oversees the awards, journalism's highest honor, under the will of publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

The board selects nominating juries for 14 categories in journalism and seven in the arts and music. These juries recommend finalists to the board, which then determines the winners.

This year's winners were announced on April 16 and will receive their prizes on May 31 at a ceremony at Columbia.

Boccardi has headed the AP, which is the world's largest news organization, since 1985. He holds a bachelor's degree from Fordham College and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He joined the AP as executive assistant to the general news editor in 1967 after eight years at New York newspapers. He was appointed AP managing editor in 1969, executive editor in 1973 and vice president in 1975.

Boccardi is a member of the national advisory board of the Freedom Forum Center for Media Studies, the board of trustees of the Newseum and the board of visitors of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He is also an honorary trustee of the William Allen White Foundation at the University of Kansas.

Other members of the Pulitzer Prize board are Columbia University President George Rupp; Andrew Barnes, chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times; Joann Byrd, editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's editorial page; John S. Carroll, editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times; Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Humanities at Harvard University; Tom Goldstein, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism; Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian and biographer; Donald E. Graham, chairman, The Washington Post Co.; Jay T. Harris, former publisher, San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News; William B. Ketter, vice president and assistant to the publisher of The Boston Globe; Richard Oppel, editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman; Rena Pederson, editorial page editor and vice president of The Dallas Morning News; Mike Pride, editor of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor; Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of The Oregonian in Portland; William Safire, columnist, The New York Times; Paul Steiger, managing editor, The Wall Street Journal, and Seymour Topping, administrator of the prizes.



Jim Rosenberg (tech@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor covering newspaper technology for E&P.



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