Journalist and UNC-Chapel Hill faculty member Ferrel Guillory was announced Wednesday as the first member of a committee set up by Gov. Mike Easley to decide whether his administration should change its practices for handling e-mail.

A former News & Observer reporter and editor, Guillory is a senior fellow at MDC Inc., a workforce and economic-development nonprofit research firm in Chapel Hill, according to a news release.

Franklin Freeman, Easley's senior assistant for government affairs and a former state Supreme Court justice, heads the group.

State workers have been working under a policy that allows them to delete messages that they don't think have "reference" or "administrative" value. Open records advocates have said that state law doesn't give that level of discretion to employees.