The Ontarion chats with the Detroit reporter about journalism, politics, and the motor city
While it is not uncommon for a journalist from the New York Times to become a bestselling author, it is perhaps a bit unusual for a reporter from a local television station to achieve international fame as a people’s champion. Detroit native Charlie LeDuff has the distinction of having done both, though not in the order you might first guess.
The reporter will be speaking about his life and his latest book, “Detroit: An American Autopsy,” at the University of Guelph on Oct. 17 and Oct.18.
LeDuff has been a reporter at My Fox Detroit since 2010, yet this was, by all accounts, a step down from his previous job at the New York Times. It was at the Times that LeDuff penned the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning series “How Race is Lived in America” and worked on other nationally-syndicated articles, books and television programs. It was also at the Times where he began to feel the pressure to return to his hometown. As LeDuff tells it, he wanted to report on the issues he wanted to report on, in the way he wanted to report on them. With experience comes certain privilege, and at My Fox Detroit, LeDuff has the enviable freedom reporting with much creative license.
On television, LeDuff has ruthlessly exposed Detroit’s notoriously seedy political underbelly, and in the process become something a workingman’s hero. It would not be inaccurate to think of him as the Bruce Springsteen of the news, or an old-fashioned reporter in the best sense. His exposés uncover political charlatanism of all sorts, and showcase, in no uncertain terms, the human consequences of a neglected and, as he puts it, dead city. His forthright style, his humour, and his unconventional methods have made him something of a popular icon, and LeDuff’s reports on Detroit’s struggles frequently reach an international audience via social-media sites like Reddit.
In advance of his visit to Guelph, I spoke with Charlie LeDuff on the phone about his journalism, his politics, and what’s going on in his floundering city. Here are some highlights:
On Journalism
LeDuff’s had a rough day, but he’s not one to be coy. He’s on fire before I can get a word in. I ask him about making the transition from print to TV journalism, and about why he adds humour to his stories.
“There’s a rule in television that people that don’t understand numbers,” says LeDuff. “When you’re giving them numbers and budget numbers, they get confused. And I said [to the producers], I’m gonna bet they don’t. If you put in the right context, if you actually put the number on screen, if you make the number the story they will completely understand it. And two, let’s interject some humour, and everybody take a breath, take a laugh, see what a circus this is, and let’s look at the number again.”
In his investigation of Detroit’s outsourcing of the Meal on Wheels program (to a company that makes prison food), the number: $138,000 in “savings,” is repeated between clips of LeDuff visiting homebound seniors and eating cat food. LeDuff is under no illusions of formality; he believes reporting should appeal to a mass audience.
“You’ve got to distill it… We’re not fine artists, we’re using a mass medium, you and I, and so how do you say it generally but intelligently, where it’s not so watered down that there’s nothing being pointed out.”
On Politics
LeDuff believes passionately that people want to know what’s going on around them. Yet he also believes that most need someone to give it to them straight. And that’s where he comes in.
“[The people] want to know what’s going on with the government, they want to know what’s going on with their money, with schools and jails and pensions. They want to know.”
While LeDuff is clear about that much, it’s also clear that he takes pride in being hard to define beyond that.
“I bet you couldn’t guess my politics,” he asks. “You don’t know if I’m a Democrat or a Republican or a conservative or a liberal do you?”
I ask him what category ‘populist’ might fall under.
“Right! Common sense!”
And if LeDuff had a mantra, that would be it. It’s those betrayals of common sense, those obvious depredations, which get him most irate. Everything else is secondary.
“Stop fucking stealing from us,” he says. “Stop mortgaging my child’s future. I’m angry. And everything else we can discuss. We can discuss raising taxes, cutting government, whether a grown man should get welfare, whether his child should get free health care. We can discuss that shit.”
His investigations on television are a reflection of these “politics,” because, according to him, the bottom line is that people just don’t want to be screwed.
“We want things to work as they should, want to be left alone, and we want the man to stay out of our business and out of our pocket. And then, when we send you money, you do the people’s work and not your own. It’s really simple.”
I ask him if he’s always so passionate about politics; if he can turn it off.
“It’s hard to turn it off, said LeDuff. “This is who I am. I don’t just do it to make a buck.”
On Detroit
Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit’s mayor from 2002 to 2008, was recently sentenced to 28 years in prison for various corruption related charges. I ask LeDuff if Detroit’s extraordinary problems make him a different reporter; if Detroit allows him to be extraordinary.
“Detroit is a place in time, Detroit is really spectacular in its failures, its depopulation, its corruption, all of that. But people are paying attention to Detroit. I’ve been all over the country, I’ve been all over America, I’ve slept in every state in this union, and I know it and I know that these problems are the same ones facing Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta and almost everywhere except Lower Manhattan.”
To use his words, Detroit is a “bell weather” for America’s current state of affairs – a indictment of societal problems of every stripe, and a warning for the future of the country. It’s hard to see the hope in his portrayal, for his stories are not often ones of change for the better.
“Our factories aren’t shuttered waiting for a better day, they’re gone. So how are we going to pay 17 trillion dollars back flipping hamburgers, or taking tolls from Canadian trucks coming over…We’re in the midst of something and I think everybody feels it.”
But it’s that last bit, the fact that “everybody feels it,” wherein hope lies. LeDuff’s goal as a reporter – don’t call him a media personality – is to help people of all backgrounds and of all levels of education understand what they’re feeling just a little bit better.