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Tom Curley is the current president and chief executive officer of the Associated Press - one of the most powerful men in media. Curley is also a former president, publisher, and one of the co-creators of USA Today.

Curley holds a political science degree from Philadelphia's La Salle University and a master's degree in business administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. He is a vice chairman of the boards at both schools. At the age of 15, Curley began his journalism career covering high school basketball for his hometown Easton Express. He continued working for newspapers during college, and joined Gannett's Rochester Times-Union in 1972 as night city/suburban editor. He became director of information for Gannett in 1976 and began coordinating Gannett's newspaper research projects, which produced more than 50,000 interviews on media use.

Curley became president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on June 1, 2003. He is the 12th person to lead the AP since its founding in 1848. Under Curley's leadership, the AP has evolved from a standard wire service, to an interactive global news network geared to meet the content needs and marketplace demands of members and customers worldwide.

Curley has restructured senior AP management and has charted the development of technology to create a multimedia database for all AP content. This is in addition to developing an international strategy to drive content and new business overseas, as well as encouraging initiatives to celebrate exceptional and distinctive AP journalism.

Curley was previously president and publisher of USA Today, the nation's largest-selling daily newspaper. Since 1998 he was also senior vice president of the newspaper's owner, Gannett Company, publisher of 100 daily newspapers in the United States.

USA Today circulation under Curley grew to more than 2.3 million copies a day.

Curley was the original news staffer on the project that led to the creation of USA Today. He was assigned in 1979 by then-Gannett Chairman Al Neuharth to study the feasibility of a national newspaper. He later worked in every department of the newspaper. He became editor of Gannett's Norwich Bulletin in 1982 and publisher of the Courier-News at Bridgewater, N.J., in 1983 before returning to USA Today in 1985. In 1986, he became the newspaper's sixth president and in 1991 added the title of publisher.

Curley is married to Marsha Stanley, a former newspaper reporter and freelance writer. They have two daughters.