As Deadline Detroit points out, reporter Charlie LeDuff has gone silent since Dec. 17, when his last news report on Fox 2 aired. (UPDATE: Except for a Jan. 17 appearance on “Let It Rip,” LeDuff has been absent from his usual media outlets.) LeDuff’s disappearance also follows a big bump in publicity after GQ Magazine named him “Madman of the Year” in their year-end issue.
Could a major development be in the works? Deadline Detroit suggests LeDuff is about to go national on Fox’s other networks. Last week, LeDuff teased on his Twitter account:
Ok here we go. Big week. Love you my darlings.
— Charlie LeDuff (@Charlieleduff) January 20, 2014
LeDuff has made a name for himself with his incendiary reporting. Of LeDuff, GQ wrote:
Besides being the author of a best-selling book about how fucked Detroit is (Detroit: An American Autopsy, published earlier this year), Charlie got famous by basically reinventing local news reporting. Like for instance, in one segment he waits with a woman who has called 911 after her house was apparently broken into. He picks her up some McDonald’s, searches her house for assailants, washes his pants, and takes a bath, all hours before the cops arrive. (Asterisk on this one: probably the only segment in the history of local network news in which producers at the station had to pixelize a reporter’s balls.)
Years ago, LeDuff came under scrutiny from Metro Times for his article titled “Frozen in indifference: Life goes on around body found in vacant warehouse” in The Detroit News, which featured a grisly photo of a frozen body’s legs sticking up through the ice.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2014.
