Sen. Frank Lautenberg
Hart Senate Office Building
Suite 324
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Sen. Lautenberg,
I would like to testify at the Commerce Committee hearing on decency in January.
Please see the op-ed I wrote last week in the Star-Ledger, attached, which summarizes a view that I believe needs to be represented in these hearings: a staunch defense of the First Amendment in the face of creeping regulation and censorship.
My credentials: I am a media executive, writer, and journalism professor. I was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, TV critic for TV Guide and People, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News, and for 10 years president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications (where I created NJ.com). I am now the new media columnist in The Guardian, where I have written about this topic, as I have in The Nation. I consult for The New York Times Company. I am a top 100 blogger at Buzzmachine.com and appear frequently CNN (including Howard Kurtz’s Reliable sources this Sunday, about this very topic), WNYC, MSNBC, and in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Business Week, and elsewhere. And I am heading development of the new media program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism.
I would be grateful for the opportunity to talk with the Commerce Committee about this most important issue at a time when media is undergoing explosive change.
If any of your staff would like to discuss this, I can be reached at ….
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Jeff Jarvis
