Grantham Prize Jurors

David Boardman | Diane Hawkins-Cox | Philip Meyer | Deborah Potter | Robert B. Semple, Jr.

David Boardman is Executive Editor of the Seattle Times, with oversight and responsibility for the News Department. The President of the Board of Directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors, IRE, Boardman has directed two Pulitzer Prize-winning team projects, and he has edited four other Pulitzer finalists. The winners were the newspaper's 1990 coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its aftermath, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer for national reporting; and the newspaper’s 1997 reporting on abuses in the federal tribal-housing program, winner of that year’s Pulitzer for investigative reporting. Among the journalism prizes he has won are the Goldsmith Prize in Investigative Reporting from Harvard University, the Worth Bingham Prize in Investigative Reporting, and the IRE Award and Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award. Twice a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, Boardman has conducted journalism seminars in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He chairs the Craft Development Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Diane Hawkins-Cox is currently a freelance journalist, and was previously a Senior Producer with the CNN Science and Technology Unit. Hawkins-Cox joined CNN in Atlanta just months before it was launched in 1980. Hawkins-Cox was Co-Producer of Next@CNN, a weekly hour-long newsmagazine focusing on technology, science, environment, and space, and she earlier had been Producer of Earth Matters, a weekly half-hour newsmagazine on global environmental issues. Along with the CNN Environment Unit, Hawkins-Cox won a national Emmy for “In Nature’s Wake,” a CNN special on the 1993 Mississippi River floods; and the Cable ACE Award for coverage of the 1992 Earth Summit. Before joining CNN in April 1980, just before its launch, Hawkins-Cox had been a writer and producer with KCMO-TV (now KCTV-TV) in Kansas City. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources (IJNR), a nonprofit continuing education organization, and a long-time member of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ).

Philip Meyer, Prize Jury Chair, is an Emeritus Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he held the Knight Chair in Journalism . The author of a book widely regarded as a seminal journalism textbook, Precision Journalism, Meyer previously had been Director of News and Circulation Research with Knight-Ridder, Inc., for which he earlier had been a National Correspondent. He was on the Detroit Free Press reporting team that won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for General Reporting on the 1967 rioting in Detroit. Meyer is the winner of the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award and of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Award. His 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age addresses the state of contemporary newspaper journalism in a time of profound change.

Deborah Potter is the Executive Director of NewsLab, providing training and online resources for journalists in all media. Potter is a highly regarded guest lecturer and leads workshops for journalists and students worldwide, focusing on reporting and writing the news online, journalism ethics and newsroom management. For the past decade Potter has served as a featured columnist for the American Journalism Review, and she reports regularly for the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Potter is a veteran television reporter, having spent 16 years as a network correspondent for CBS News and CNN. At CNN, Potter anchored news programs and reported on national politics and environmental issues. She joined CNN in 1991 after 13 years at CBS News, where she served as White House, State Department, and Congressional Correspondent, while also covering the environment. She was a frequent contributor to the primetime CBS News program 48 Hours and hosted the interview program Nightwatch.

Robert B. Semple, Jr. since 1988 has been Associate Editor of the Editorial Page for The New York Times. Between 1982 and 1988 he had been Editor of that newspaper’s Op-Ed page. Semple started with The Times in 1963 in its Washington bureau and was a political reporter and White House correspondent during President Richard M. Nixon’s first term. He has worked for The Times as a Deputy National Editor in New York and as London bureau chief. Semple in 1996 won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on environmental issues.