Big Media Meets Its Match

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He lights up at the mention of his two-song stint as a North Mississippi Allstar. 'It was one of the great moments of my life,' he says. 'I love that band.'

Copps and Adelstein share some striking biographical parallels. Both are natives of the Midwest, Copps coming from Wisconsin and Adelstein from South Dakota. Both are family men. Copps and his wife, Elizabeth, have five children, ages 19 to 35, and Adelstein and his wife, Karen, have two children, ages 3 and 6. Both worked on the staffs of influential Democratic senators, Copps for Fritz Hollings of South Carolina and Adelstein for former majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Fascinated with politics at a young age, Copps remembers writing letters to senators and filing their replies and signed photos. 'I always had this little bug that said you've got to go to Washington and get politics out of your system,' he says, and after more than 30 years inside the Beltway, he still hasn't shaken it.

The low-key Copps spends most weekends visiting his grandchildren and other family members, 'piddles around with cars,' and, well . . . that's about it. 'I used to hunt and fish a little bit, but I don't get to do too much of that anymore,' he says.

Adelstein is the son of South Dakota legislator Stanford Adelstein, but he decided not to follow Dad's Republican Party line. 'I like to think I got an education,' he quips. 'That's my joke about it, but I just learned that my concern is with the people who are the underdogs. So I naturally gravitated toward being a Democrat.'

Like Copps, Adelstein logs lots of family time, devoting most of his spare hours to his kids.

Perhaps owing to their Midwestern roots, both Copps and Adelstein have a plainspokenness that helps them distill complex issues into easily understood language. Both spent time teaching history, which has contributed to their working bond.

'Everybody else [on the commission] is a lawyer, but Jonathan and I are historians,' Copps says. 'I'm not going to say that it gives you the path to the future, but history repeats itself often enough that it's worth knowing about. You need to understand how journalism and broadcasting and media in this country developed if you're going to make an intelligent contribution.'

The rapid rise of the Internet has dramatically shifted the media and telecommunications landscape, kicking up a flurry of new questions: Who will build and control the Internet's future infrastructure? Will all Americans get equal access to high-speed broadband service? Should the government attempt to control digital content, be it spam, pornography, or anything else? Should Internet radio stations and video providers be subject to rules similar to those that traditional broadcasters follow?

With these issues looming on the horizon, many media reformers are urging activists and policy makers like Copps and Adelstein to shift their priorities rapidly. 'The Internet is the most democratic medium we've ever seen, so that's where I'd rather put all this energy--to supporting universal access to the Internet, rather than worrying about who owns what old-fashioned television networks,' says Susan Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York and a blogger (scrawford.blogware.com) on Internet issues. 'Now the real focus should be on Internet access control. It's the same issue, but on a grander scale--and where it really matters.'

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