Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Jack Lessenberry

Jack Lessenberry originally set out to become a historian. The Detroit native began reconsidering his career path during his graduate studies at the University of Michigan. Frankly, he realized he was interested in too many things.

"That's what moved me to become a journalist. So I went into journalism and I never looked back."

Jack's resume boasts nearly thirty years of hard-core journalism experience. He has worked as a foreign correspondent and executive national editor of The Detroit News, during which time he reported from
more than forty countries. His writing has appeared in such national publications as Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

Locally, he is a contributing editor and columnist for The Metro Times, The Traverse-City Record Eagle, The Toledo (Ohio) Blade, and has been a consultant for many other newspapers, including the former Heritage Newspaper Group in Wayne and Washtenaw counties. He also has provided political analysis for local television and radio stations, and is a professor of journalism at Wayne State University.

Ben Burns, who was Jack's former boss at the Detroit News and now runs the Journalism program at Wayne State University, calls Jack "Brilliant, knowledgeable, witty, sometimes sarcastic, and smarter than 98% of us." Burns also praises Jack's memory. "He has a remarkable ability to retain
information-you might say he's a walking, talking Google."

Jack has always said that the thing he loves about journalism is the fact that it's all about people-about connecting with and learning from them.

"I want to create intelligent dialogue about the problems we face. I think we need to think about and talk about who we are as a country and people, and explore those things."

Staff

Tamar Charney - If you’re a regular listener you probably know Tamar from her feature reporting and fill in work on All Things Considered, but behind the scenes she leads the station’s production team.  Past show’s she’s produced for the station include Stateside and Storylines Midwest. Her production credits also include music documentaries and the live national broadcast from the Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival.

Zoe Clark

Richie Duchon

Katherine Gorman

 

Theme Music

Paul Brill wrote the theme music. We gave him several guidelines and then turned him loose to compose the music.

“The Michigan Radio producers indicated that they liked scores that built with layers,” he says. “They also indicated that they were interested in the mating of electronic beats with acoustic instruments. When composing this piece, I set out to convey a sense of urgency, while building tension and release.”

Brill is a native New Yorker. He’s a self-taught musician who began writing his own songs during college. Eventually he moved to California and joined a band. But the ups-and-downs of a major record label and national-touring schedule soon led him to focus on his solo work as a singer-songwriter.

He’s released three albums to date, the most recent of which he’s called “a big musical breakthrough.” “New Pagan Love Song”. His musical work has provided the backdrops for several films, including the forthcoming documentary “The Trials of Daryl Hunt,” for which he scored the entire soundtrack. Paul says he’s looking forward to the future, when he can find a balance between the three aspects of music he loves: commercial work (such as film-scores), musical production on other artists’ albums, and his own songwriting and recording.

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Jack's Essays

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Recent Shows

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