Huffington headlines Kerry hearing on news media

Former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington are among those scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing Wednesday on the future of the news media, or lack thereof.

Senator John F. Kerry's Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, released the witness list this afternoon for the hearing entitled, “The Future of Journalism.”

The subcommittee will examine issues threatening the news media, explore how the industry arrived at this point and discuss potential models for news delivery in the future, it said.

Kerry joined the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation in urging the New York Times Co. not to shutter the Globe, among the newspapers across the country struggling financially to make the transition into delivering more content via the web.

“It’s a critical time to examine the future of journalism in the digital Information Age and what it means to our country and our democracy,” Kerry said in a statement. “American history is inextricably linked to the narrative of our free and independent press, and today, America’s newspapers, which have been the bedrock of the free press, are struggling just to stay afloat as new means of delivering information are multiplying by the day. Whatever the model for the future, we must do all we can to ensure a diverse and independent news media endures.”

The other witnesses are: Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat; Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google Inc.; Alberto Ibarguen, president of the Knight Foundation; David Simon, former reporter for the Baltimore Sun who wrote the book that inspired the TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street;" James Moroney, CEO of the Dallas Morning News.