Media Access Project Staff Gaps Make for Some Challenges

The two most recent departures, disclosed in May, point up what current and former MAP staffers say is the group’s role in training attorneys to work in public-interest law. That MAP serves such a role is a double-edged sword, they said: By letting young attorneys work on legislative and regulatory issues and also help represent clients in appeals court, MAP provides a fertile training ground for alumni to work for various nonprofits. But it also means MAP has to periodically replenish its ranks, something happening now.

Being down a lawyer and a CEO at a public-interest law firm that now has four full-time employees has necessitated some changes. Alumni and attorney Cheryl Leanza is working on contract for MAP part-time on the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and low-power FM proceedings, Schwartzman said. With those issues and AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile, which MAP opposes, and the FCC’s quadrennial review of media ownership rules, “it’s made it hard for us to take on new things,” Schwartzman said. And “the second” the agency’s December net neutrality order appears in the Federal Register, “there will be a spurt of litigation” on which MAP will represent nonprofits that seek such rules, he said.

MAP’s reason for being is “an incubator and mentoring operation for people going into the public interest” field, Schwartzman said: “To train people and put them out to go onto bigger and better things.” He’s looking for a “younger person” to be CEO and stay in that job for a long time. “It is not an easy fit,” Schwartzman said. “It’s going to take as long as it takes.” Former FCC Commissioner Tyrone Brown left that position in March, after less than a year. Schwartzman said he hopes to fill the associate director position last held by Matt Wood, now policy director of Free Press, perhaps next month or in October. Schwartzman expects MAP to report to the IRS that revenue increased last year, and it got a four-month extension to complete its audit and file the results by Sept. 15. In 2009, IRS records show the group had total revenue of just under $750,000. That was $37,000 less than its expenses.

"It’s going to be very hard” with AT&T/T-Mobile and various proceedings at the FCC stemming from last year’s National Broadband Plan all pending, said President Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge, which she started in 2001 after 10 years at MAP. “I look at my own docket” of issues she’s active on, “and it’s completely overwhelming,” Sohn said. “On the one hand, the FCC isn’t doing as much as I had hoped” so it’s not the worst time to not be fully staffed, she said: But when net neutrality rules take effect and are appealed, and with mobile data roaming rules being appealed, “a lot more shifts to the courts, and that’s really where MAP’s expertise is."

"That’s where the public interest community relies on MAP,” Sohn continued. She and others singled out Schwartzman’s mentorship in taking them along to meetings where they met various communications policy players, were shown how to work with companies on issues when their collective interests overlap, and were taught how to write good briefs. It’s “an essential part of this community,” said co-director Angela Campbell of Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation, which represents nonprofits at the FCC. “I hope they can find the right people to keep them going and active."

It’s a “particularly challenging” time to not be fully staffed, said Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld, who worked at MAP for nine years. “You have a major merger, you have the quadrennial review, there will be the network neutrality litigation -- it’s never a good time to be short-handed,” he said. “The scope of the work expands as the broadband issues come to touch more things.” His time at MAP helps him “anticipate the issues where they are going to arise [to] put things on the public agenda,” Feld said. “You're spotting the issues and being much more proactive than in a private law firm, where clients are coming to you with problems."

MAP’s size means staffers can quickly expand their areas of expertise, said former employees including Parul Desai, who joined Consumers Union as policy counsel after working At MAP for five years. “Because the organization is so small, you can really create a portfolio that doesn’t match your job description,” she said: Doing for instance “more policy or more advocacy than really what your job description said” while meeting legislators and regulators. The group is “not just a launching pad” for careers elsewhere, as many stay for a decade, said Wood: And “you can kind of conduct your own portfolio at times.”