CEI Announces New Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow: Bill Frezza

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 1, 2013 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to announce that Bill Frezza is the 2013-14 recipient of the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship.

Frezza joined CEI in 2011 as a Fellow in Technology & Entrepreneurship. Since then, he’s been a prolific commentator on public policy and a strong public advocate for free markets and limited government. Frezza is a contributing columnist to RealClearMarkets, Forbes, Bio-IT World and The Huffington Post and a frequent guest on CNBC, Fox Business, CBN News, and The Blaze. He is no newcomer to political journalism: His earliest forays into journalism date back to the roaring 90s, when he was a regular tech policy columnist for Network Computing Magazine, Communications Week, Internet Week, and Nikkei Communications. In 2011, he was named a finalist for the Hoiles Prize for excellence in American journalism.

As an entrepreneur and 35-year veteran of the technology industry, Frezza’s journey is testament to the power of socioeconomic mobility in America. Since graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 with degrees in electrical engineering and biology, he has been a scientist, an engineer, a product manager, a salesman, a consultant, an entrepreneur, an author, a technology evangelist and a venture capitalist.

Now, as CEI’s Warren Brookes fellow, Frezza is planning his venture into broadcast journalism. CEI and Frezza are partnering with the RealClear brand to launch a new radio show which will be produced by CEI and hosted by Frezza. On “RealClear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza,” public policy veteran Frezza will engage in thoughtful dialogue with a wide range of guests, covering everything from politics to books to religion to world news in an effort to raise audience awareness and sharpen perspectives on modern issues. “RealClear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza” will be available online and on air in select cities within the next year.

CEI is excited to be working with Frezza on this promising new radio show, and believes Frezza’s transition from venture capitalist to free market journalist makes him a perfect recipient for CEI’s 2013-2014 Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship. The one-year fellowship is named in honor of nationally syndicated columnist Warren T. Brookes, who passed away in 1991.

As a columnist, Warren Brookes drew on his two decades of experience in the business world. His work was founded in his “[u]nflinching faith in the capacity of human ingenuity to overcome scarcity,” as Charles Kels wrote in Harvard Magazine. During his 16 years with The Boston Herald and The Detroit News, and as a nationally-syndicated columnist, Brookes, in the words of Thomas Bray of The Detroit News, “made a virtual career out of questioning the conventional wisdoms of the so-called experts.” One editor memorably said that Brookes was “ever the skeptic, but never the cynic.”

Bill Frezza’s work honors this legacy. Like Warren Brookes, Frezza is a skeptic—but one who celebrates human enterprise as the world’s most valuable resource.

>> For Bill Frezza’s recent work, visit CEI.org