Charlie LeDuff facts for kids

Charles Royal LeDuff (born April 1, 1966) is an American journalist, writer, and media personality. He is the host of the No BS News Hour with Charlie LeDuff. LeDuff was employed by The New York Times for 12 years, then employed by The Detroit News, leaving in October 2010 after two years to join the Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK Channel 2 to do on-air journalism. LeDuff left Fox 2 Detroit on December 1, 2016. LeDuff has won a number of prestigious journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, but has also faced accusations of plagiarism and distortion in his career, to which he has responded.

Biography

Charlie LeDuff was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. He is one eighth Ojibway. He discovered as an adult that his paternal grandfather was Creole (of African and French descent).

LeDuff grew up in Westland, Michigan. He attended Winston Churchill High School in Livonia, Michigan and the University of Michigan. At the University of Michigan, LeDuff was a brother of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. His father served in the U.S. Navy. His parents' marriage ended in divorce. He has a deceased sister and stepbrother. LeDuff has four surviving siblings. He has lived in many cities around the country and the world. Before joining The New York Times, LeDuff worked as a schoolteacher and carpenter in Michigan and a cannery hand in Alaska. He has also worked as a baker in Denmark.

LeDuff previously lived with his wife, Amy Kuzniar, and his daughter in Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit. He considers himself a political independent, and is a practicing Roman Catholic. LeDuff is also a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa tribe of Michigan.

In December 2023, LeDuff was arrested and charged with domestic violence after a 911 call to his home. LeDuff pleaded not guilty, was released on bail and is prohibited from contacting his wife. On May 14, 2024, the charges against LeDuff were dismissed, after his wife invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify.

Writing career

LeDuff's stated writing influences include the books Hop on Pop, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Treasure Island, and writers Mickey Spillane, Raymond Carver, Joseph Mitchell, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Raymond Chandler. Among writers in the newspaper business who influenced him, LeDuff lists Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, and Pete Hamill.

Journalism

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, LeDuff was hired by The New York Times on a ten-week minority scholarship. He was a staff reporter at The Times from 1995 to 2007, ending his tenure as a member of the Los Angeles bureau. LeDuff, who had been on paternity leave, quit The Times to pursue the promotion of his second book, US Guys, according to a memorandum from Suzanne Daley, the national editor. The next day LeDuff said his rationale for leaving was more complicated, noting that he made an appointment with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher and chairman of The Times, to say he would be leaving because, "I can't write the things I want to say. I want to talk about race, I want to talk about class. I want to talk about the things we should be talking about."

Of his professional career in newspapers, LeDuff states:

I’m not a journalist, I’m a reporter. The difference between a reporter and a journalist is that a journalist can type without looking. The problem with journalism is its self-importance. Like in the New York Times, there’s style guides; you can’t call a doctor a physician, you got to call him a doctor- too high falutin’. You can’t call an undertaker a mortician- too high falutin’; you got to call him an undertaker. You can’t call a lawyer an attorney, you have to call him a lawyer. But somehow, since we control it, and we’re very self-important people, you can call a reporter a journalist.

LeDuff is best known as a contributor to the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times project, "How Race Is Lived in America"; a ten-part series, including a piece by LeDuff called "At a Slaughterhouse Some Things Never Die". In 1999, the Columbia University School of Journalism gave him its Mike Berger Award for distinguished writing about New York City.

From August to November 2006, LeDuff wrote an eight-part series for The New York Times called American Album. The series was composed of articles and videos presenting "portraits of offbeat Americans". The profiles included pieces about "a Latina from the rough side of Dallas" who "works the lobster shift at a Burger King," a Minuteman and an Alaska national guardsman believed to be the first Inuit, or Eskimo, killed because of the Iraq war. LeDuff has covered the war in Iraq, crossed the border with Mexican migrants, and chronicled a Brooklyn fire house in the aftermath of 9/11.

In January 2022, The Guardian published an article by LeDuff and Jordan Chariton (Status Coup News) about the lack of bribery and racketeering (RICO) charges in the years-long Flint water scandal, even under Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, in office since 2019. The duo was interviewed on The Hill's Rising news program by Ryan Grim and Robby Soave. and Michael Moore interviewed Chariton on his Rumble podcast (mid-February episode 230).

Other writings

LeDuff is the author of four books:

• Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts, 2005
• US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man, 2008
• Detroit: An American Autopsy, 2013
• Sh*tshow!: The Country's Collapsing and the Ratings Are Great, 2018

Television career

LeDuff worked on an experimental project for The Times with the Discovery Channel and produced a show called Only in America, which featured participatory journalism where LeDuff played on a semi-professional football team, raced with thoroughbreds, performed in a gay rodeo, joined the circus, preached in Appalachia, joined the elite world of New York models and played one play on special teams for the af2 football club, the Amarillo Dusters.

On July 14, 2006, LeDuff starred in and narrated a documentary on the British channel BBC Four called United Gates of America in which he experienced life with the mainly white, Christian, and middle-class citizens of the gated community Canyon Lake in Riverside County, California.

In December 2010, LeDuff was a reporter for WJBK, the Fox affiliate in Detroit, Michigan. In 2012, a YouTube video of his reporting on Meals on Wheels became one of the top links of all time on the social network Reddit. In July 2012, LeDuff's cheeky, yet serious, "par 3168" golf adventure report through various neglected communities of Detroit, including the long-abandoned Packard factory, got national recognition. His series, The Americans, human interest stories about the changing American economy and culture, was syndicated to other Fox Television Stations Group stations for airing on their newscasts.

On November 10, 2013, LeDuff was prominently featured on a Detroit focused episode of the CNN series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. In February 2015, Vice News announced LeDuff would be a regular contributor. On December 1, 2016, LeDuff announced that he would be leaving WJBK Fox 2 Detroit, but planning to stay in Michigan. In 2016, LeDuff started working at Detroit's American Coney Island diner, working as the restaurant's handyman, while writing a book on the side. In 2018, he became a weekly columnist for Deadline Detroit.

Radio and podcasting career

In September 2018, LeDuff launched The No BS News Hour with Charlie LeDuff, a podcast featuring news commentary with a Detroit-centric bent and is part of a "podcast mini-empire" started by Detroit radio personality Drew Lane. A month after the launch, in October 2018, Detroit radio "Superstation" WFDF (AM) 910 began airing the show on a trial basis; the station CEO joked that they'd have to do "a lot of bleeping" for broadcast. He also floated the idea of a late-night talk show with LeDuff on WADL (TV).