Michael Olesker

Michael Olesker writes about politics, race, police, poverty, education, economic disparity, prison reform, sports, and the life of American cities. He’s been doing this for nearly half a century.   For nearly 30 years, Olesker (pronounced o-LES-ker) was the award-winning metro columnist for the Baltimore Sun. For most of those years, he did broadcast journalism as well. He broadcast daily commentary over two Baltimore radio stations over a six-year period. Then, over 20 years, he did commentary five nights a week for WJZ-TV’s Eyewitness News, the CBS affiliate in Baltimore.   Before joining The Sun, Olesker wrote for another Baltimore daily newspaper, The News American. He was an investigative reporter whose stories led to criminal convictions of political figures, uncovered police abuse and miserable prison conditions, exposed major drug dealers, and revealed charity rip-offs. For two years, he wrote a column for the Baltimore Examiner.   Over the course of his career, Olesker was nominated four times for a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor. He is the author of six books, four of them published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, which deal with social and political issues in Baltimore. He also wrote a book, “Tonight at Six: A Daily Show Masquerading as a TV News Program,” about local television news. And he co-authored "Leap Into Darkness: Seven Years on the Run in Wartime Europe," a holocaust memoir written with a survivor. That book has now been translated into half a dozen languages and was published in the U.S. and numerous European countries.   Michael was also a visiting professor of journalism at Towson University, and he has given graduation speeches at numerous high schools and colleges, including the Johns Hopkins University.