Dow Jones Special Committee names new member

The Dow Jones Special Committee, formed under an agreement between the former shareholders of Dow Jones & Co. and News Corp. in December 2007, announced that Cynthia A. Glassman has been elected to succeed Nicholas Negroponte for a five-year term ending December 2023.

Glassman is a former under secretary for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce (2006 – 2009) and a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (2002- 2006, including acting chair during the summer of 2005).

Glassman currently is a senior research scholar at the Institute for Corporate Responsibility at George Washington University. She also serves on the board of directors of Discover Financial Services where she chairs the Audit Committee and of Navigant Consulting, where she chairs the nominating and governance committee and is a member of the audit committee.

She also is a member of the Audit Committee Chair Advisory Council of the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Glassman was an economist for the Federal Reserve System in the periods from 1971 to 1974 and 1977 to 1986. From 1986 to 2002 she was a consultant to the financial services industry at three companies, including Ernst & Young LLP. She holds a B.A. in economics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, in England.

The five-person special committee is an independent body charged with safeguarding the editorial independence of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones as well as monitoring their adherence to the highest ethical and professional standards.

Negroponte, a founder and chairman emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child project, served two five-year terms on the Special Committee.

“The committee benefited greatly from Nicholas’s thoughtful insights into the committee’s role and the impact of the digital revolution on a fast-changing media,” said Thomas Bray, the committee chair.

The other members of the committee are secretary Louis Boccardi, Paul Ingrassia and Anne Patterson.