New York, Dec. 6, 2007 — Columbia University today announced that Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.
With nearly 30 years of service with The Wall Street Journal, Gigot has been the paper's editorial page editor and vice president since September 2001. He is responsible for the newspaper's editorials, op-ed articles and Leisure & Arts criticism and directs the editorial pages of the Journal's Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com Web site. He is also the host of the weekly half-hour news program, the Journal Editorial Report, on the Fox News Channel.
Gigot joined the Journal in 1980 as a reporter in Chicago, and in 1982 he became the Journal's Asia correspondent, based in Hong Kong. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting on the Philippines. In 1984, he was named the first editorial page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. In 1987, he was assigned to Washington, where he contributed editorials and a weekly column on politics, "Potomac Watch," which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Gigot is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, where he was chairman of the daily student newspaper.
The 91st annual Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on April 7, 2008, and presented in May at a ceremony at Columbia. The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded annually for excellence in journalism, literature, music and drama in 21 categories.
About the Prizes
The Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered at Columbia University, were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.
The 19-member board is composed mainly of leading editors or news executives from media outlets across the U.S., as well as four academics. The dean of Columbia's journalism school and the administrator of the prizes are nonvoting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years for a total of nine years.