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By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff WriterPaul Tash is selected to help choose winners from among nominees for the famed prizes.
Paul Tash, editor, CEO and chairman of the St. Petersburg Times , has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, which bestows the best-known awards in journalism.
The board selects the jurors who pick the nominees for the prizes, and then chooses the winner from among those nominees. It also sets the rules for the competition.
Other board members include Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Washington Post chairman Donald Graham and Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and senior vice president of the Associated Press. The chairman is Harvard University humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Although the journalism awards garner the most attention, the board also awards prizes for literature, music and drama, requiring board members with a broad range of interests.
Tash, 51, said he was home watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on television when Gates called with the news. Tash joked that when he hung up, he asked himself, "What am I doing watching TV? I've got to find a book to start reading!"
A native of South Bend, Ind., Tash graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1976 and earned a bachelor of laws degree from Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1978. He joined the Times as a reporter that fall, climbing through the ranks to the top post last year. He and his wife, Karyn, have two daughters, ages 20 and 16.
Tash also chairs the Florida First Amendment Foundation and is a director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Tash's election fills the seat vacated earlier this year by Andrew Barnes, who was chairman and chief executive of the St. Petersburg Times for 15 years. Barnes turned those corporate duties over to Tash upon his retirement last year.