Jones, currently a journalism professor at Duke University, covered the press for The New York Times for nine years and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for a series of articles on the downfall of the Bingham family's newspaper empire in Louisville, Ky.

Jones also formerly hosted a National Public Radio program about the press and hosts "Media Matters," a weekly public television program of media criticism.

Jones' commentary on the media has appeared widely on television and radio and in publications, including Brill's Content and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Jones and his wife, Susan E. Tifft, have written two critically acclaimed books--The Patriarch, about the Bingham family, and The Trust, about the Ochs and Sulzberger family, which has owned The Times for more than a century.

The Shorenstein Center holds seminars on the press and politics and sponsors a fellowship program for academics and journalists who come to the center to conduct research on journalism, campaigns and elections, Internet media and other issues.

It also gives annual awards for investigative reporting and for books and research about the media.

The center also runs the Vanishing Voter Project, a series of public opinion polls that look at public interest in politics.