HAMPTONS INSTITUTE: THE CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Ken Auletta launched the Annals of Communications column for The New Yorker magazine in 1992. He is the author of thirteen books, including five national bestsellers—Three blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed and Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It. His twelfth book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else), was published in June 2018. His thirteenth book, Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, was published in July 2022. Ken is currently reporting a documentary on Murdoch with acclaimed director Matt Tyrnauer, and is also writing about The Murdoch Puzzle anti-poverty advocacy organization focusing on Africa.

Tom Freston is a cofounder of MTV and the former CEO of Viacom, where he oversaw Paramount Pictures. After launching a successful clothing export company out of Afghanistan and India, Freston transitioned into the media landscape, helping found MTV and bringing it to international fame in more than 150 countries. Before his Viacom roles, he ran MTV Networks for seventeen years, overseeing Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, and other legendary networks. He is a board member of Imagine Entertainment and a board member emeritus of both the American Museum of Natural History and the think tank New America. He currently serves as Board Chair of The ONE Campaign, an anti-poverty advocacy organization focusing on Africa.

Photo: Carey Lowell

The Common Good is a leading pro-democracy, nonprofit organization which features important leaders and experts to inform engagement in the political process. Here are just a few of their hundreds of past speakers: Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush; Secretaries John Kerry, Antony Blinken, Henry Kissinger, Leon Panetta, and Jeh Johnson; Majority Leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer; Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Lewis, Senators Lindsey Graham, Elissa Slotkin, and John McCain; Governors Ned Lamont, Kathy Hochul, Tim Kaine, and Larry Hogan; foreign affairs experts such as Richard Haass and Ian Bremmer, U.S. and foreign Ambassadors such as Frank Wisner and Martin Indyk, Ron Prosor (Is), François Delattre (Fr), activists like Gloria Steinem, Jose Antonio Vargas, and Lily Ledbetter, historians like Jon Meacham, Heather Cox Richardson, and H. W. Brands ,journalists, authors and editors such as Marty Baron, Harry Evans, and Jill Abramson, Fareed Zakaria, Carl Bernstein, Lawrence Wright, Steve Coll, and Gillian Tett; entertainment figures such as Denzel Washington, Jane Fonda, Kevin Costner and Chevy Chase; business leaders such as Mike Bloomberg, Ray Dalio, Glenn Hutchins and John Bogle, political strategists like Paul Begala, Tim Miller, and Donna Brazile, commentator/ broadcast journalists like Lesley Stahl, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ari Melber, Jonathan Capehart, Molly Jong-Fast, and Gayle King, and many others. Thousands of audience members have gained invaluable insights about today’s current events from their distinguished roster of speakers. 

Patricia Duff is a prominent political activist, fundraiser, and the founder and CEO of The Common Good (TCG), a nonpartisan, nonprofit, pro-democracy organization dedicated to strengthening civic participation and engagement in the political process. TCG convenes forums and conferences featuring leading thinkers, policymakers, and public figures from across the political spectrum; conducts national surveys on division and polarization; develops initiatives to address extremism; celebrates our immigrant roots as Americans; and publishes America’s Report Card, comparing the United States with other nations on measures such as democracy, happiness, and economic performance. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, TCG has recently launched the American Renewal Project to advance practical public policy solutions, inspire institutional renewal, and restore a shared belief in what America - and Americans - can still achieve.

Duff’s first job was for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reinvestigated the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, as Senior Researcher, Special Assistant to the Chief Counsel, and Public Information Officer. Duff then moved into the political arena with work on numerous political campaigns, including presidential and Senate races, and as vice president at two leading media, polling and political strategy firms in Washington, D.C., and served as Associate Producer of the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

Duff has long been active in civic and philanthropic efforts. She founded Colors United, a program for at-risk high school students in six of the most challenged South Central Los Angeles schools, and has been a leading advocate for reform of the New York court system — efforts that prompted a judicial commission with hearings and meaningful changes in New York City and State courts.

Her work has been widely recognized, with coverage in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. She was named a “Rising Star” by the Los Angeles Times, “West Coast Wonder Woman” by Harper’s Bazaar, and one of Esquire’s “Women We Love.”

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the Board of Advisors for Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, is a member of the Task Force on Democracy led by former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Judge J. Michael Luttig, and a Trustee of PEN America in support of free speech. 

Duff previously served as a presidential appointee to the Library of Congress Board of Trustees and a Mayoral appointee to the Commission on Women in Los Angeles. Her numerous leadership and board roles have also included NPR, Save the Children, Federal Hall, Lincoln Center Film Society, American Ballet Theatre, the Hamptons International Film Festival, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Brady United.  Born in Los Angeles, Duff spent her preteen and teen years in Europe where her father worked for an American multinational corporation, then returned to the U.S. to attend college at Barnard and Georgetown University School of Foreign Service where she earned her BSFS.

Trained as an historian, Ellen Chesler, Ph.D. is author of the critically praised biography, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, which has remained in print for 34 years. She has co-edited two anthologies, Where Human Rights Begin (2005)  and Women and Girls Rising (2015), and she has written more than 100  essays and articles in prominent publications.  Early in her career she  served in government as Chief of Staff to New York City Council President, Carol Bellamy, the first woman ever elected to a citywide office. And she later spent a decade as a senior fellow at the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, overseeing a broad portfolio of grants to organizations and individuals advancing and protecting women's rights around the world.  Long active in progressive politics, she is recognized for both the practical and intellectual perspectives she brings to her work..  With her husband, Matthew Mallow, she has been a Hamptons homeowner since 1983.