Search Committee Narrows Choices for Head of Shorenstein Center

Media critic Alex S. Jones and former NBC News President Michael Gartner are among candidates for the top post at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and the Public Interest, according to Sheila P. Burke, the Kennedy School Executive Dean who co-chairs the search committee.

The prestigious Shorenstein Center Director post opened up earlier this year after Marvin Kalb announced his intention to leave the job to direct the Center's office in Washington, D.C.. Kalb became the center's first director in 1986, after serving as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for CBS News and a moderator of "Meet the Press."

The candidates for his position also boast impressive credentials.

Jones is currently Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism at Duke University. As a reporter at the New York Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize for "distinguished specialized reporting" in 1987 for his series on the collapse of a Louisville newspaper dynasty.

Gartner also won a Pulitzer Prize--the 1997 award for editorial writing--before assuming the top post at NBC. In 1994, he was an Institute of Politics fellow, and led a study group on the relationship between media and politics.

Another published report had named Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas as an additional candidate for the post, but Burke said that Thomas announced last week that he will remain at Newsweek.

Burke said the search committee--which she co-chairs with Professor Thomas E. Patterson--has no set deadline for completion.

"The search is ongoing and we're interviewing candidates," she said. "We are considering a number of candidates."