Founder of the Alliance for Better Campaigns to Join The Pew Charitable Trusts

3/25/2003

From: Barbara Beck of The Pew Charitable Trusts, 215-575-4816

PHILADELPHIA, March 25 -- Paul Taylor, founder and executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns, has been named assistant director of the Venture Fund at The Pew Charitable Trusts. The appointment is effective June 2, 2003.

Taylor will be based at the Trusts' Washington, D.C. office and will work primarily on overseeing, coordinating and expanding the work of the Venture Fund's information projects. These currently include the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Pew Hispanic Center -- all charged with doing timely, relevant research on important policy and social trends. These information projects, a hallmark of the Trusts' work, are well known for high-quality, non-partisan research on pressing public concerns.

"The Trusts' information projects are already doing a first-rate job of filling gaps in public knowledge on a wide range of significant issues," said Don Kimelman, director of Venture Fund. "Paul's intellect, vision and rich journalistic background make him an ideal candidate to take this work to a new level. I couldn't be more pleased that he wanted to make this assignment his next big challenge."

Before turning his attention to campaign reform groups, Taylor had 25 years of experience as a newspaper reporter, the last 14 of which he spent at The Washington Post. At The Post, he covered national politics and social issues and, from 1992-1995, served as The Post's bureau chief in South Africa and reported on the historic transformation from apartheid to democracy. Taylor also was a reporter at The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, N.C. (1970-1973) and The Philadelphia Inquirer (1973-1981).

Taylor left The Washington Post in 1996 to create The Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, which urged television networks to provide free air time to presidential candidates. In 1998, he founded the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a reform group that advocates for free political air time as a way to make campaigns less expensive and political discourse more substantive and engaging. He also authored See How They Run, a book about the 1988 presidential campaign and coauthored The Old Versus the New News about political journalism.

Meredith McGehee, the former senior vice-president of Common Cause, will direct the Alliance's activities on an interim basis. Taylor will continue to serve as president of the Alliance board.

Taylor twice served as the visiting Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and lectured at numerous other colleges. He received a BA in American Studies at Yale University, where he served as executive editor for The Daily News.

The Venture Fund at The Pew Charitable Trusts is a unique investment tool, enabling the Trusts' to explore opportunities that fall outside the clearly defined goals and objectives of the six program areas. Venture Fund-supported projects are characterized by timeliness, innovation and high potential for impact. In 2002, the Trusts' Venture Fund investments totaled more than $21.7 million.

The Pew Charitable Trusts (http://www.pewtrusts.com) support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion.

Based in Philadelphia, with an office in Washington, D.C., the Trusts make strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 2002, with approximately $3.8 billion in assets, the Trusts committed over $166 million to 287 nonprofit organizations.