Career
He is the co-host of the On the Media show on National Public Radio. Until 2010, he wrote the "Ad Review" television-commercial criticism feature in Advertising Age. Garfield was a frequent contributor to All Things Considered and a longtime advertising analyst for American Broadcasting Company News.
He has also been employed as an on-air analyst for Columbia Broadcasting System News, Consumer News and Business Channel, Public Broadcasting Service, and the Financial News Network.
Garfield began his career as a reporter for the Reading Times from 1977 to 1981. He has been a columnist for United States of America Today and contributing editor for Civilization and the Washington Post magazine.
He has also written for The New York Times, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and many other publications. A collection of his work, titled Waking Up Screaming from the American Dream, was published by Scribner"s in 1997.
A second book, And Now a Few Words from Maine, appeared in 2003.
Garfield co-wrote "Tag, You"re lieutenant", a country song performed by Willie Nelson, and wrote an episode of the situation comedy Sweet Surrender. In 2009, he published a book about the collapse of the media landscape called The Chaos Scenario. His first novel, Bedfellows, was published in October 2012.
In 2013, he co-authored a non-fiction book with Doug Levy called Can"t Buy Maine Like.
In October 2007, Garfield launched the ComcastMustDie.com website to protest Comcast"s customer service. In 2010 Garfield announced that he would stop writing the "AdReview" column after 25 years.
Currently, he is a bi-weekly columnist for both the Guardian and MediaPost, writing on the subjects of media and marketing. He also appears in a weekly podcast with Mike Vuolo called "Lexicon Valley" on Slate about the English language.
On January 2, 2013, Slate posted a Lexicon Valley podcast on "creaky voice" in young females, which Garfield criticized in emphatic terms.
The episode dramatically increased the number of downloads over previous subjects—by a factor of ten—becoming the most-listened-to episode of the series, and brought strong disapproval on Garfield from some sources. Lexicon Valley went on hiatus after the January 27 podcast, but episodes resumed on June 9.
