Charlie LeDuff
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charlie LeDuff is an American journalist currently working as a reporter at The Detroit News.
He 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. He was a staff reporter at The New York Times from 1995 to 2007, ending his tenure as a member of the Los Angeles bureau. He also starred in a ten-part television series of participatory journalism called Only in America for Discovery Times where he embedded himself into a variety of subcultures from fight clubs to the real 8 Mile Road rap scene in order to reveal their inner workings. As part of this series he played one play on special teams for the af2 football club, the Amarillo Dusters.
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. 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. He lives with his wife in Hollywood, California.
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 much more. From August to November of 2006, LeDuff, 40, 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.
On Monday the 14th of July 2006, Charlie starred and narrated a documentary on the British channel, BBC Four. The documentary was called United Gates of America in which Charlie experienced life with the mostly-white, Christian and middle-class citizens of a gated community Canyon Lake in Riverside County, California.
He is the author of two books, US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man and Work and Other Sins.
On Tuesday, February 6, 2007, he appeared as a guest on the Comedy Central program "The Colbert Report". Colbert joked on the program if he was French as in "the Duff," regarding the 'le' in his surname. LeDuff is Gaelic (Celtic) for "black", though on the web site of the New York Times, his former employer misspells his name as Leduff. He is of Cajun and Native American descent.
On Tuesday, February 13, 2007, he appeared as a guest 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."
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."
