J.H. Snider snider@iSolon.org J.H. Snider is the president of iSolon.org and frequently writes about media policy. In 2008, he was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He is the author of  Is the spectrum just too complex for reporters?, The Art of Spectrum Lobbying: America's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to Prevent it from Recurring, Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power, Citizens Guide to the Airwaves, The Quest to Protect Creative Policy Ideas, Strengthen Think Tank Accountability, and Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics of Legislative Transparency.  Snider has a Ph.D. in American Government from Northwestern University, an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, and an undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College.

 

Contributions

Automating watchdog reporting
COMMENTARY | July 203, 2009
Standardized smart data input and straight-forward, computer-programmed analysis will make conflicts of interest leap out at reporters, writes J. H Snider.


Taking steps to deal with media parasitism
COMMENTARY | June 178, 2009
As non-profit journalism grows in importance, donors and practitioners should adopt and enforce standards that give credit to sources instead of pilfering their ideas and riding roughshod over them.


Free riding: a deeply embedded media tradition
COMMENTARY | June 173, 2009
Scholar J.H. Snider balks on hearing new media practitioners characterized as parasites or leeches and reaches deep down to expose longstanding, not very upfront behavior on the part of old media reporters and editors. (First of two parts)


The switch to digital TV—an early bailout that went awry
COMMENTARY | June 163, 2009
If Congress gets to seriously consider bailing out the newspaper industry, the press and the public should keep in mind the costly mistakes in the government’s bailout of the local, over-the-air TV broadcast industry.


Is the spectrum just too complex for reporters?
ASK THIS | February 52, 2008
The electromagnetic spectrum is incredibly valuable, worth perhaps a trillion dollars. But its parts are auctioned off cheaply or given away by the government to a few knowledgeable people who then make fortunes. And the story is just about never reported.