Louis Boccardi

An editor turned executive, New York journalist Mr Boccardi was president and chief executive at Associated Press, a Dow Jones rival, for 18 years until retiring in 2003. He first joined AP back in 1967.

He is a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, a group founded in 1909 (seven years after the Bancroft family took control of Dow Jones) that is "dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behaviour".

Mr Boccardi is also a member of the Pulitzer Prize board, which awards the highest journalistic accolade in America.

Thomas Bray

Mr Bray is the only member of the special committee to have direct editorial links to The Wall Street Journal. A well-known columnist in the US with liberal conservative leanings, Mr Bray was the editorial page editor at The Detroit News from 1983 until 2000. He worked at The Wall Street Journal in the 1970s, running its opinion editorial page, and continues to write pieces for its website OpinionJournal.com.

Jennifer Dunn

A Washington-born former congresswoman, Jennifer Dunn led the state's Republican Party for nearly 12 years until 1992, after which she became a Republican member of the House of Representatives. Ms Dunn, who is close friend of First Lady Laura Bush, retired from Congress in 2004 and is now a lobbyist for the Anglo-American law firm DLA Piper.

Jack Fuller

Mr Fuller is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who followed his father into news writing at the Chicago Tribune when he was 16. The Vietnam veteran spent most of his early career at the Tribune, in 1975 becoming assistant to Attorney General Edward Levi, who was widely credited with restoring order to the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal. Mr Fuller returned to the Tribune in 1977 and like Mr Bray, has had a long career in writing editorials, which eventually won him the Pulitzer in 1986. He retired as the Tribune Publishing Group's president in 2004 but continues to write for the company.

Nicholas Negroponte

Professor Negroponte founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs in the mid-1980s. He has recently garnered much attention for his invention of a $100 laptop that can be powered by the sun, by batteries or even a hand crank, for use by children in developing countries. An expert in digital media, Professor Negroponte wrote Being Digital, a hugely successful book released in 1995 that explored the future of digital technology and was translated into 40 languages.

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