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John L. Dotson Jr., president and publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal, and Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing Co., have been elected co-chairs of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Their selection was announced today by George Rupp, president of Columbia University, which awards the annual prizes on the boardâs recommendation. Members of the board serve a maximum of nine years; chairmen usually serve in their ninth year.

Dotson and Fuller succeed James V. Risser, director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University, and Walter Rugaber, president and publisher of The Roanoke (Va.) Times, who are retiring from the board.

Under Dotsonâs leadership, the Beacon Journal won a Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service in 1994 for its series on race relations and the launch of Coming Together, a community organization that fosters better racial relations in Akron. He was appointed publisher in 1992, and was previously president and publisher of the Daily Camera in Boulder Colorado; worked in several business and editorial departments of Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., and in several positions at Newsweek , including Los Angeles bureau chief and senior editor/news editor in New York. He is a graduate of Temple University and completed the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University.

Dotson is the recipient of the John S. Knight Gold Medal, Knight-Ridderâs highest award for overall achievement; the presidentâs award of the National Association of Black Journalists, and the distinguished diversity award for lifetime achievement by the National Association of Minority Media Executives. He is chairman and founder of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, an organization that trains journalists to work in a multicultural environment. He is a member of the board of directors of the Newspaper Association of America and of the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, as well as the boards of visitors of the John S. Knight Fellowship Program and journalism schools at the University of Colorado and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jack Fuller, named president of Tribune Publishing Company in 1997, began his career as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune when he was a 16-year-old high school student and later served as a Tribune reporter in Chicago and Washington. As editor of the newspaperâs editorial page, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1986. In 1989 he became editor of the Chicago Tribune and later was appointed publisher and chief executive officer. He is the author of News Values: Ideas for an Information Age and five novels: Convergence, Fragments, Mass, Our Fathersâ Shadows, and Legendsâ End.

Fuller holds a bachelorâs degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a juris doctorate from Yale Law School. He served in the U.S. Army, including a year as a Vietnam correspondent for Pacific Stars and Stripes, and as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General. He is on the board of directors of the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation and the Inter-American Press Association; a trustee of the University of Chicago and The Field Museum; a member of the Inter-American Dialog, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

University; Rena Pederson, vice president/editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News; Sandra Mims Rowe, editor, The Oregonian; William Safire, columnist, The New York Times; Edward Seaton, editor in chief, Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury; Paul Steiger, managing editor, The Wall Street Journal; and Seymour Topping, administrator of the Prizes.

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