Andrew Blau

Andrew Blau directed the Benton Foundation's program in Communications Policy and Practice during the 1990s, a period when the Foundation was one of the most active public-interest voices in federal communications policy, working to ensure that the digital transition and the restructuring of the telecommunications system served civic as well as commercial purposes. At the Clinton administration's request he organized the first meeting to bring together nonprofit and foundation leaders with White House officials to discuss new communications technologies and their implications for the public interest, and he testified before Congress about the nonprofit sector's role in the information age. He later served as Program Director at the Markle Foundation, continuing work at the intersection of technology policy and public benefit. The ACM recognized his contributions with the 1994 Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award.

His work at the Benton Foundation connected directly to the community media field's policy concerns, as Benton was among the organizations arguing in regulatory proceedings and public debate that public access, localism, and civic communication deserved protection as telecommunications law was rewritten.

Andrew's career represents the foundation and policy research strand of the field, the people who carried community media's arguments into the regulatory venues where the rules that govern stations are made.