Meet the Reporter – Web-exclusive Video
Even before his series “No Defense: Shortcut to Death Row,” Stephen Henderson was known as the kind of journalist who wanted to write stories that mattered. He had covered the inner city in Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore. His editor at McClatchy, Jim Asher, knew “He had a passion for trying to bring stories to the front of everybody’s consciousness that matter to the country and to democracy, and he’s made a habit of doing those.” That kind of dedication was certainly something that struck producer Oriana Zill de Granados who described Henderson’s work as “public service journalism – really trying to educate people about the problems in our society and what can be done to fix them.”
In April 2007, Henderson began a new calling as the deputy editorial page editor at the Detroit Free Press. After seven years working for newspapers in Chicago and Baltimore and covering the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. for the last four, Henderson returned to the place he started, and the city he called home. He told his readers, “I've learned to love the great things about this place, hate the rest, but own it all as part of where I'm from and who I am.” He returned to Detroit, despite dire pronostications about the death of the city, because it was his “responsibility,” and he was fulfilling his “obligation to come back, to give back, to help out.”
In an EXPOSÉ interview, Stephen Henderson talks more about what effects he hopes his journalism will have; his trip to Valdosta, Georgia, where his material grandfather is from; and why he decided to go back to Detroit.
>>Watch the full web-exclusive interview with reporter Stephen Henderson.
>>Read one of Henderson’s recent columns in the Detroit Free Press.
