Bob Garfield
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Robert Garfield (born c. 1955) is an American journalist and commentator, and the host of Bully Pulpit from Booksmart Studios. He is former co-host of '' On the Media'' from
WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that ...
. He is also the host of ''The Genius Dialogues'' from
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. Until 2010, he wrote the "Ad Review" TV-commercial criticism feature in ''
Advertising Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in m ...
''. From 1986 to 1999, Garfield was a roving correspondent for ''
All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...
'' and was a longtime advertising analyst for ''
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''.


Career

Garfield began his career as a reporter for the ''
Reading Times The ''Reading Eagle'' is the major daily newspaper in Reading, Pennsylvania. A family-owned newspaper until the spring of 2019, its reported circulation is 37,000 (daily) and 50,000 (Sundays). It serves the Reading and Berks County region of P ...
'' from 1977 to 1981. He has been a columnist for ''
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'' and contributing editor for ''Civilization'' and ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
' magazine. He wrote the "AdReview" column in
Advertising Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in m ...
from 1985 to 2010. He has also written for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', ''
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'', ''
Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...
'', ''
Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'', and many other publications. A collection of his work, titled '' Waking Up Screaming from the American Dream'', was published by Scribner's in 1997. A second book, '' And Now a Few Words from Me'', appeared in 2003. Garfield co-wrote "Tag, You're It", a
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song performed on
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by
Willie Nelson Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country musician. The critical success of the album '' Shotgun Willie'' (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of '' Red Headed Stranger'' (1975) and '' Stardust'' (1 ...
, and wrote an episode of the situation comedy ''Sweet Surrender''. In 2009, he published a book about the collapse of the media landscape called ''The Chaos Scenario.'' His first novel, ''Bedfellows'', was published in October 2012. In 2013, he co-authored a non-fiction book with Doug Levy called ''Can't Buy Me Like''. In October 2007, Garfield launche
Comcast Must Die
(no longer updated) as a customer-service platform of last resort for disgruntled Comcast subscribers. Garfield co-hosted the radio program and podcast '' On the Media'' with
Brooke Gladstone Brooke Gladstone (born 1955) is an American journalist, author and media analyst. She is the host and managing editor of the WNYC radio program '' On the Media''. Career Gladstone has covered media for much of her career. In the early 1980s, she ...
from 2001 until 2021. It covers journalism and media criticism. He also hosts the podcast
The Genius Dialogues
', presented by
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, in which he interviews winners of the MacArthur Fellows Program (often called "Genius Grants"). In 2012, Garfield co-founded a podcast about the English language called ''Lexicon Valley'', presented by Slate, with producer Mike Vuolo. In the January 2, 2013 episode on "
creaky voice In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...
" in young females, Garfield criticized the phenomenon in emphatic terms. The episode was the most listened to by a factor of ten and brought strong disapproval on Garfield from some sources. Garfield and Vuolo hosted the podcast until 2016, when both left the podcast to pursue other projects. In 2015, Garfield founded the Media Future Summit at Wharton, an annual gathering of high-level executives, owners and academics aimed at addressing the flailing media economy. He is a senior fellow at the Wharton Future of Advertising Program, SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. He has been a Professor of Practice at Penn and a Distinguished Visiting Faculty in Media Ecology at
Berlin School of Creative Leadership Berlin School of Creative Leadership is an international business school headquartered in Charlottenburg, Berlin. The school was founded in 2006 with the purpose of ‘furthering the development of leadership executives in the creative industries ...
. In 2021, New York Public Radio fired Garfield, saying he had violated the station's anti-bullying policy. Station officials cited a pattern of behavior uncovered by an independent investigator. Station management issued Garfield a warning in 2020 but the behavior persisted, officials said. Garfield said the behavior amounted to two instances of yelling at meetings, in both cases as a response to "provocation
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was extraordinary and simply shocking".


Personal life

Garfield was raised in a
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in
Bala Cynwyd Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1 (City Avenue). It was originally two separ ...
, Pennsylvania, "a hometown of my youth". He lives in Potomac, Maryland. He is married to Milena Trobozić; they have three daughters.


Works

* ''Waking Up Screaming from the American Dream'', Scribner's, 1997. * ''And Now a Few Words from Me: advertising's leading critic lays down the law, once and for all'' New York ; London : McGraw-Hill, 2003. * ''The Chaos Scenario''. Nashville, Tenn.: Stielstra Publishing, 2009. * ''Bedfellows'', Las Vegas, NV : Thomas & Mercer, 2012. * Doug Levy, ''Can't Buy Me Like'', Portfolio, 2013. * ''American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves'', Berkeley, California: Counterpoint, 2020.


Honors and awards

In 1997, Garfield's "Ad Review" won a Jesse H. Neal Award for best column. Garfield's work with ''On the Media'' has won several awards. In 2003, he received the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Media Criticism in Best Body of Work, TV and Radio and an
Edward R. Murrow Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe f ...
Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association for
investigative journalism Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years res ...
. In 2004, ''On the Media'' won a Peabody Award for excellence. In both 2012 and 2013, the show won the 2012 Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism from the College of Communications at Penn State. In 2015, he won a Mirror Award for Best Single Story for the ''On the Media'' episode "OTM Goes Inside Washington."


References


External links


BobGarfield.net - Bob Garfield's hub site

Advertising Age - Bob Garfield: The Blog

People - Bob Garfield - On The Media


* https://web.archive.org/web/20080511172622/http://comcastmustdie.com/
"The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized: Stratospheric valuations for social media titans assume vast advertising revenues that will never arrive,"
by Bob Garfield, ''IEEE Spectrum,'' June 2011 {{DEFAULTSORT:Garfield, Bob 1950s births Living people American male journalists NPR personalities Jewish American writers Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Jewish American journalists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American Jews