Jim Horwood

Jim Horwood was one of community media's essential legal voices, a communications attorney whose work helped protect PEG access, local authority, and the public's right to community media infrastructure. As legal advisor for the ACM and a longtime attorney with Spiegel & McDiarmid, Jim worked at the front lines of cable franchise law, telecommunications policy, PEG access protections, and municipal communications issues. His work was often technical, but its purpose was deeply human: making sure local communities could keep the channels, funding, facilities, and legal standing they needed to tell their own stories.

For decades, Jim helped local governments, access organizations, and national community media advocates respond to changing law and industry pressure. He advised on franchise renewal, transfer, enforcement, rate regulation, broadband infrastructure, and the shifting federal and state policies that shaped whether PEG channels could survive and serve the public. He also helped defend PEG access in major legal and policy fights, including work before the U.S. Supreme Court and state regulatory proceedings where community media's future was on the line.

Jim's passing is a recent loss for the field, but his legacy is built for the long view. Much of community media depends on work most viewers never see: careful legal language, public-interest arguments, regulatory filings, and the steady defense of local rights when technology and business models change. Jim gave that work seriousness, continuity, and care. The stations, cities, producers, and communities that continue to benefit from PEG access also carry forward the quiet legal architecture he helped protect.