Charlie Leduff Popular Books

Charlie Leduff Biography & Facts

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. In February 2024, the court scheduled his bench trial for May 14. 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). Controversies LeDuff has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism and of reporting inaccuracies, to which he has responded. A 1995 article for The East Bay Monthly was examined by Modern Luxury's San Francisco publication in a February 2004 article titled "Charlie LeDuff's Bay Area Secret" following suggestions that LeDuff had plagiarized elements of Ted Conover's book Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes. A January 18, 2003, article for The New York Times entitled "As an American Armada Leaves San Diego, Tears Are the Rule of the Day" was accused of featuring inaccurate quotations and depictions of two of the ten subjects interviewed, according to an article published in September 2003 by Marvin Olasky in the evangelical WORLD magazine. According to Olasky, Lieutenant Commander Beidler, a subject profiled with his wife in the man-on-the-street piece, recalled saying something else to LeDuff and believed the quotes and depictions of himself and his wife used were inaccurate and fabricated by LeDuff. According to Olasky, Times senior editor Bill Borders wrote to Beidler, saying that he had "thoroughly looked into your complaint" and concluding "[Mr. LeDuff] thinks that he accurately represented his interview with you and your wife, and therefore so do I." A December 8, 2003, article for The New York Times entitled "Los Angeles by Kayak: Vistas of Concrete Banks" was accused of drawing from Blake Gumprecht's 1999 book The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth. One week later, on December 15, 2003, The New York Times appended a clarification: LeDuff discussed various accusations made against his reporting in a March 11, 2008, interview with essayist Dan Schneider. In 2011, LeDuff was sued for defamation over a story he wrot.... Discover the Charlie Leduff popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Charlie Leduff books.