Do you know Jack?
Jack Lessenberry has been a writer for many national and regional publications, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, George, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Currently, he is a contributing editor and columnist for the Toledo Blade, and other newspapers.
He was a longtime commentator on Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor, and was the host of Primary Source, a daily two-hour issues and affairs radio show in Detroit. He also spent many years as the Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman.
Lessenberry is also a past president of the Historical Society of Michigan and recently retired after many years as head of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University. In the 1980s, he reported as foreign correspondent for and executive national editor of The Detroit News, during which time he reported from more than 40 countries. He has also worked for other newspapers in Michigan, Tennessee and Ohio, and was Editor-in-Chief of both Detroit Monthly and Corporate Detroit magazines.
He was also editorial vice-president of the former Hometown Newspaper Group, which published more than 60 weekly, semi-weekly and daily papers in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky before being sold to Gannett in 2005.
He is the co-author of the book, The People’s Lawyer, The Life and Times of Frank J. Kelley, the Nation’s Longest-Serving Attorney General, published by Wayne State University Press in 2015; and the author of Reason vs. Racism: A Newspaper Family, Race and Justice (BCI Press, 2020) and of Thinking About the Other Fella: Avern Cohn’s Life and the Law (Auld Classic Books, 2021).
Lessenberry also was the host for eleven years of “Deadline Now,” a weekly public affairs show broadcast from Toledo, and has been a frequent commentator on Michigan issues on many broadcast outlets.
He won a National Emmy award in 1995 for one of two Frontline documentaries he helped report and produce on Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
Lessenberry also was featured in a March 1996 A&E Biography he helped produce on Kevorkian, and has assisted on others for British television and Court TV. He was played by actor James Urbaniak in the 2010 HBO Film, “You Don’t Know Jack,” about the life and times of the doctor who made assisted suicide famous.
He was named the Journalist of the Year in 2002 by the Metropolitan Detroit Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Lessenberry, 69, has a master’s degree in Journalism and East European studies from the University of Michigan.
His partner in life, Elizabeth, is a rare book and private collections archivist and librarian. They live in Huntington Woods and Charlevoix, with their dogs Ashley and Chet, and a copy of every Michigan Manual since 1869 and every Almanac of American Politics since they were first published in 1972.