This story was updated with additional information.
Charlie LeDuff, the polarizing Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has increasingly peddled right-wing outrage on his podcast, was fired from the Detroit News after using a vulgar, coded phrase aimed at Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
LeDuff came under fire over the weekend for telling Nessel in a social media post, “See you next Tuesday,” a backronym for the word “cunt.” It’s often written, “C U Next Tuesday.””
In an email to reporters on Saturday, Detroit News editor and publisher Gary Miles said LeDuff had been fired.
“While we stand by the journalism that we have published under his byline, I could not envision moving forward with his weekly column in light of recent events,” Miles wrote.
Miles tells Metro Times that he and Charlie mutually agreed to terminate the weekly column.
In an interview with Metro Times on Monday morning, LeDuff was defiant and said he thought the insult was “clever” because his weekly column was published on Tuesdays.
“I’m not apologizing. I have nothing to apologize for. … I stand by it,” LeDuff says. “I said something clever on my own space because I am fucking pissed.”
LeDuff alleged in a Detroit News column last week that Nessel “subtly pressured her staff to close” an investigation into a friend, Traci Kornack, a personal injury lawyer and treasurer of the Michigan Democratic Party. Kornack was accused of bilking an insurance company out of nearly $50,000 by using the account of an elderly, brain-damaged client.
In a news release a day after the column was published, Nessel denied wrongdoing, and her acting chief legal counsel, Linus Banghart-Linn, accused LeDuff of sloppy, sensational journalism in a letter to the Detroit News.
“The opinion piece published yesterday not only fails to achieve any public good or ‘sunshine’ on the work of government, but irresponsibly twists half-understood and fully fabricated notions of the Department to the detriment of public trust in their State government,” Banghart-Linn’s letter read.
LeDuff’s insult swiftly drew condemnation from journalists.
“This is disgusting and reprehensible,” Detroit News politics editor Chad Livengood tweeted Saturday. “@charlieleduff should do us all a favor and resign.”
Jon King, a local freelance reporter, said it was important for journalists to speak out because LeDuff’s insult tarnished the profession.
“While I can’t speak for anyone but myself, my sense is that his openly hateful, misogynistic response only served to further blur the line between holding truth to power and partisan advocacy,” King tweeted. “It’s no coincidence that the initial reaction came from our female colleagues. They know all too well how their gender is weaponized against them. So when they see a male journalist indulge in that weaponization, I imagine it is not just infuriating, it is also deflating.”
Alan Stamm, a former reporter at Deadline Detroit, where LeDuff was previously a columnist, suggested the Detroit News would be better off without LeDuff.
“Charlie LeDuff is a loose cannon who backfires embarrassingly and will do so repeatedly if not tossed overboard,” Stamm tweeted.
State lawmakers also spoke out and called for LeDuff's termination. Addressing several Detroit News reporters and editors, Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, tweeted, “you good with your boy calling Michigan’s Attorney General a c***? Do tell us more about your ‘editorial standards.’ Asking for an army of women who have endured lifetimes of misogyny. Fire @charlieleduff.”
As expected, conservatives came to LeDuff’s defense, and some even repeated the phrase.
“Ladies can’t have it both ways,” Meshawn Maddock, former Michigan Republican Party co-chair, tweeted Sunday. “Be all offended [by] the men who use bad words, but demand to be treated like men when it suits them.”
LeDuff is no stranger to controversy. In 1995, he conceded that he plagiarized a story while working for The New York Times. He also has been accused of manufacturing quotes and featuring inaccurate descriptions.
After 12 years at The New York Times, LeDuff took a reporting job at the Detroit News, where details in some of LeDuff’s stories were called into question. In one story that made national news, LeDuff accused Detroit police of failing to respond to his call about a dead body discovered lodged in ice in an abandoned warehouse. Metro Times and the Detroit Free Press both published stories contradicting LeDuff’s accounts of what happened.
In October 2010 LeDeuff left the Detroit News to join Fox 2, where he was known for using bizarre antics to report on serious issues. In 2011, a Detroit police officer sued LeDuff over two of his Detroit News stories that claimed she moonlighted as a stripper and danced at the long-rumored, never-proven Kwame Kilpatrick party at the Manoogian Mansion. In the lawsuit, which was eventually dismissed, Officer Paytra Williams alleged LeDuff got facts wrong in the story and disputed that she moonlighted as a stripper. In 2013, LeDuff was accused of urinating in public, biting a security guard at a St. Patrick’s Day party, and calling three policewomen “whores.” He left Fox 2 in November 2016.
LeDuff wrote two critically acclaimed books, Detroit: An American Autopsy (2008) and Shitshow!: The Country’s Collapsing and the Ratings Are Great (2018).
In October 2018, LeDuff launched his ongoing podcast, The No BS News Hour, where he lurched to the right and built a conservative following by attacking Democrats and taking a hardline position against immigration. He frequently appears on Fox News and conservative podcasts.
His co-host Karen Dumas couldn't be reached for comment.
LeDuff insists he didn’t need the Detroit News job, which he says paid “peanuts,” because of the success of his podcast.
If he has any regrets, he says, it’s the harm done to Detroit News editor Gary Miles and editorial page editor Nolan Finley.
“I regret the stress and the decision they had to make,” LeDuff says. “I admire them. I think of them as mentors and colleagues. I regret any ignominy or shade or stress on them. That’s who I apologize to and nobody else.”
Nessel’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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