Charlie LeDuff
Encyclopedia
Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer Prize
winning American journalist, writer, and media personality who left The Detroit News in October 2010 after two years and joined Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK Ch. 2 to do on-air journalism.
. His parents' marriage ended in divorce, and he has a deceased sister and stepbrother. His father served in the U.S. Navy. 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 currently lives with his wife in Pleasant Ridge
, Michigan
, a 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
.
, To Kill a Mockingbird
, The Grapes of Wrath
, Treasure Island
, 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
.
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:
LeDuff is best known for his contributions to the 2001 Pulitzer Prize
-winning New York Times series How Race Is Lived in America, and has also received a Meyer Berger Award for distinguished writing about New York City
.
From August to November 2006, LeDuff wrote an eight-part series, American Album, whose topics included "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.
, LeDuff has been accused of plagiarism and manufactured quotations. He was accused of manufacturing quotations attributed to a U.S. naval officer in San Diego and directly plagiarizing sections of Blake Gumprecht's 1999 book about kayaking down the Los Angeles River. In a February, 2004, article titled "Charlie Duff's Bay Area Secret," San Francisco Magazine examined suggestions that LeDuff had plagiarized Ted Conover's
book, Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes, in an article for the East Bay Monthly in 1995–the same year he was hired by the New York Times. The magazine provided a page comparing passages between the two, as well as another page comparing LeDuff's story on the Los Angeles River with passages from Blake Gumprecht's book.
In an online interview, LeDuff responded to the charges by claiming that he never manufactured quotes, and apologized to one writer whose words he was accused of plagiarizing in person and print. In Detroit, allegations of improprieties have continued to surface in relation to several of LeDuff's articles for the Detroit News. The Detroit Metro Times responded to a January 28, 2009 story about a man discovered frozen in an elevator shaft of an abandoned building by pointing out inconsistencies in LeDuff's article and the Detroit Free Press
also noted inconsistencies with LeDuff's portrayal of the police response and quotations LeDuff attributed to a police dispatcher.
The preface of US Guys includes this quote on Leduff's view of the American male:
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 mostly-white, Christian
, and middle-class citizens of a gated community Canyon Lake
in Riverside County, California
.
As of December 2, 2010, LeDuff is a reporter for FOX 2 News, a newstation in Michigan.
program The Colbert Report. Host Stephen Colbert
joked that that LeDuff's name meant "the Duff" in French. LeDuff is Gaelic
(Celtic) for "black", although on the web site of the New York Times, his former employer misspells his name as Leduff, with a lower case d.
On February 13, 2007, LeDuff appeared on the "The Adam Carolla Show", because co-host Teresa Strasser
had heard him on NPR
and thought he was so charming and interesting - she actually pulled over to listen to the whole show. After a long, thought-provoking segment, Adam asked him to come back semi-regularly. Charlie replied "anytime."
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning American journalist, writer, and media personality who left The Detroit News in October 2010 after two years and joined Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK Ch. 2 to do on-air journalism.
Life
LeDuff is of Louisiana Creole and Ojibway descent, and was born in Portsmouth, VirginiaPortsmouth, Virginia
Portsmouth is located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2010, the city had a total population of 95,535.The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a historic and active U.S...
. His parents' marriage ended in divorce, and he has a deceased sister and stepbrother. His father served in the U.S. Navy. LeDuff has four surviving siblings. He has lived in many cities around the country and the world. Before joining The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, LeDuff worked as a schoolteacher and carpenter in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
and a cannery hand in Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
. He has also worked as a baker in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
.
LeDuff currently lives with his wife in Pleasant Ridge
Pleasant Ridge
Pleasant Ridge may refer to a place in the United States:* Pleasant Ridge , a plantation near Camden, Alabama* Pleasant Ridge, Indiana* Pleasant Ridge Plantation, Maine* Pleasant Ridge, Michigan* Pleasant Ridge, Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, a 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
Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians
The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Michigan, commonly shortened to Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians or the more colloquial Sault Tribe, is an indigenous community located in what is now known as Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The tribal headquarters is located within the major city in...
.
Writing career
LeDuff's writing influences include Hop On PopHop on Pop
Hop on Pop is a 1963 children's picture book by Dr. Seuss . It was published as part of the Random House Beginner Books series, and is subtitled "The Simplest Seuss for Youngest Use"...
, To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature...
, The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
, Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
, Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...
, Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
, Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell was an American writer best known for the work he published in The New Yorker. He is known for his carefully written portraits of eccentrics and people on the fringes of society, especially in and around New York City.Mitchell was born on his maternal grandparents' farm near...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, and Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
. Among writers in the newspaper business who influenced him, LeDuff lists Mike Royko
Mike Royko
Michael "Mike" Royko was a newspaper columnist in Chicago, who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary...
, Jimmy Breslin
Jimmy Breslin
Jimmy Breslin is an American journalist and author. He currently writes a column for the New York Daily News' Sunday edition. He has written numerous novels, and columns of his have appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City...
, and Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill is an American journalist, novelist, essayist, editor and educator. Widely traveled and having written on a broad range of topics, he is perhaps best known for his career as a New York City journalist, as "the author of columns that sought to capture the particular flavors of New York...
.
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 AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
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
Suzanne Daley
Suzanne M. Daley is an American journalist who was the national editor for The New York Times from 2005 to 2010. In early 2010 she returned to reporting with responsibility for special assignment feature writing across Europe....
, 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 for his contributions to the 2001 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning New York Times series How Race Is Lived in America, and has also received a Meyer Berger Award for distinguished writing about New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
From August to November 2006, LeDuff wrote an eight-part series, American Album, whose topics included "a Latina from the rough side of Dallas" who "works the lobster shift at a Burger King
Burger King
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...
," 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
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
migrants
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
, and chronicled a Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
fire house in the aftermath of 9/11.
Controversy
Like his friend and fellow alumnus of the New York Times minority internship program Jayson BlairJayson Blair
Jayson Blair is an American reporter formerly with The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of plagiarism and fabrication in his stories. Since 2007 he has worked as a life coach in the field of mental health.-Background:Blair was born in...
, LeDuff has been accused of plagiarism and manufactured quotations. He was accused of manufacturing quotations attributed to a U.S. naval officer in San Diego and directly plagiarizing sections of Blake Gumprecht's 1999 book about kayaking down the Los Angeles River. In a February, 2004, article titled "Charlie Duff's Bay Area Secret," San Francisco Magazine examined suggestions that LeDuff had plagiarized Ted Conover's
Ted Conover
Ted Conover is an American author and journalist. A graduate of Denver's Manual High School and Amherst College and a Marshall Scholar, he is also a distinguished writer-in-residence in the of New York University...
book, Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes, in an article for the East Bay Monthly in 1995–the same year he was hired by the New York Times. The magazine provided a page comparing passages between the two, as well as another page comparing LeDuff's story on the Los Angeles River with passages from Blake Gumprecht's book.
In an online interview, LeDuff responded to the charges by claiming that he never manufactured quotes, and apologized to one writer whose words he was accused of plagiarizing in person and print. In Detroit, allegations of improprieties have continued to surface in relation to several of LeDuff's articles for the Detroit News. The Detroit Metro Times responded to a January 28, 2009 story about a man discovered frozen in an elevator shaft of an abandoned building by pointing out inconsistencies in LeDuff's article and the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
also noted inconsistencies with LeDuff's portrayal of the police response and quotations LeDuff attributed to a police dispatcher.
Other writings
LeDuff is the author of two books, US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man and Work and Other Sins.The preface of US Guys includes this quote on Leduff's view of the American male:
- The American man has been taught that while it is better to avoid a fight; that honor cannot always be defended with reason. He should never admit fear. He should always strive to put the blade in his adversary’s chest, not his back. An American man should know how to load and fire a gun. He should know how to ride a horse, bet on a horse, bet on the stock market, and bet on the cards. A good man should know a woman’s body and know how to please her. His woman, in turn, should never speak anything but well of him in public. An American man should have been raised in the church, rejected the church and eventually found virtue in the church.
- The American man should be educated. He should work. He should honor his debts and live within his means. He should be able to recite poetry and have bits of true philosophy at his fingertips. He should be able to play an instrument and know how to help a rose grow. An American man should know how to dress and speak his language well. He should be handy and mechanically inclined and yet his nails must be clean. A man should have children, and at some point his children should reject him. And in the course of his life, a man’s children should return and find virtue in him.
- This is what an American man should be. Of course, no such man has ever existed, and no man probably ever will.
Television career
LeDuff worked on an experimental project for The Times with the Discovery ChannelDiscovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
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
Af2
AF2 was the name of the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup...
football club, the Amarillo Dusters
Amarillo Dusters
The Amarillo Venom are an professional indoor football team in the Lone Star Football League. The Venom began play in 2004 as the Amarillo Dusters, a charter member of the Intense Football League, a small indoor football league based in Texas. They won the championship in their first and only...
.
On July 14, 2006, LeDuff starred in and narrated a documentary on the British channel, BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
, called United Gates of America
United Gates of America
United Gates of America is a 2006 BBC documentary directed by Alex Cooke, featuring journalist Charlie LeDuff. He lived for a month within the gated community of Canyon Lake in Riverside County, California, to try and discover why people wanted to lock themselves behind gates and fences, and what...
in which he experienced life with the mostly-white, Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, and middle-class citizens of a gated community Canyon Lake
Canyon Lake, California
Canyon Lake is a gated community in Riverside County, California, United States. One of only five gated cities in California, Canyon Lake began as a master-planned community developed by Corona Land Company in 1968. The “City of Canyon Lake” was incorporated on December 1, 1990. It geographically...
in Riverside County, California
Riverside County, California
Riverside County is a county in the U.S. state of California. One of 58 California counties, it covers in the southern part of the state, and stretches from Orange County to the Colorado River, which forms the state border with Arizona. The county derives its name from the city of Riverside,...
.
As of December 2, 2010, LeDuff is a reporter for FOX 2 News, a newstation in Michigan.
Pop cultural references
On February 6, 2007, LeDuff appeared as a guest on the Comedy CentralComedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
program The Colbert Report. Host Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
joked that that LeDuff's name meant "the Duff" in French. LeDuff is Gaelic
Goidelic languages
The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
(Celtic) for "black", although on the web site of the New York Times, his former employer misspells his name as Leduff, with a lower case d.
On February 13, 2007, LeDuff appeared on the "The Adam Carolla Show", because co-host Teresa Strasser
Teresa Strasser
Teresa Lynn Strasser is an American writer and television personality known for hosting the first season of the home makeover show While You Were Out on TLC. She also co-hosted The Adam Carolla Show.-Personal life:...
had heard him on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
and thought he was so charming and interesting - she actually pulled over to listen to the whole show. After a long, thought-provoking segment, Adam asked him to come back semi-regularly. Charlie replied "anytime."
External links
- Charlie LeDuff's personal website
- LeDuff's page at the Detroit News
- Review of US Guys
- http://www.charlierose.com/guests/charlie-leduffLeDuff TV interview with Charlie RoseCharlie RoseCharles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
] - Online radio interview with LeDuff
- Article featuring LeDuff, The Weekly Standard, "The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep"