Jack Lessenberry (B.A., M.A. Journalism and East European Studies), is a full-time member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Lessenberry directs and supervises all internships for Wayne State University’s Department of Communication, and assists in job placement for many graduates.

Mr. Lessenberry also currently serves as editorial vice-president of Hometown Communications, a consortium of 64 local newspapers in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. During the course of his career, Mr. Lessenberry has served as a consultant and editorial advisor, and is currently serving as a writer for many national and regional publications, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, George, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Mr. Lessenberry is a contributing editor and columnist for Hour Detroit Magazine, the Metro Times, the Traverse-City Record Eagle and the Toledo (Ohio) Blade, and formerly for the Oakland Press and the Heritage Newspaper Group in Wayne and Washtenaw counties. He also serves as The Blade's writing coach and ombudsman.

Mr. Lessenberry is WJBK-TV's regular political analyst, and also does regular radio commentary on WDET-FM, Detroit's public radio station, as well as occasional analysis for two other television stations in Detroit.

Mr. Lessenberry served as a former foreign correspondent for, and executive national editor of, The Detroit News, during which time he reported from more than 40 countries. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of both Detroit Monthly and Corporate Detroit magazines.

In 1998 Mr. Lessenberry served as co-chair of Michigan State University's Alcohol Action Team. For three years in the 1980s, he conducted the graduate workshop in the master's program in print journalism at the University of Michigan.

Mr. Lessenberry was featured in a March 1996 A&E Biography program on Dr. Jack Kevorkian that Mr. Lessenbery helped to produce. He has assisted in the production of two documentaries on Dr. Kevorkian for British television, and on a Court TV documentary about Detroit and the Belle Isle bridge slaying. Mr. Lessenberry was the ghostwriter of the autobiography of portrait painter and Michigan NOW founder, Patricia Hill Burnett, and is currently working on a book on the mysterious death of Viola Liuzzo, the Detroit woman slain after the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

In 2002, Mr. Lessenberry was named Journalist of the Year by the Metropolitan Detroit Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 1995 Mr. Lessenberry received a National Emmy award for one of two Frontline documentaries he helped report and produce on Dr. Jack Kevorkian.