Larry Bensky Biography
Larry Bensky, a teacher and political activist, works as a literary and political journalist with experience in print and broadcast media. Bensky worked as a print writer and editor before and throughout his career in broadcasting.
Larry Bensky Age
Larry was born on 1 May 1937, in New York, New York, United States of America. He is 86 years old as of May 2023.
Larry Bensky Education
Bensky graduate from Stuyvesant High School and Yale University, where he worked as managing editor of the Yale Daily News, with departmental honors.
Larry Bensky Wife
He is happily married to his wife and has one daughter.
Larry Bensky Career
Bensky worked as a print writer and editor before and throughout his career in broadcasting. After graduating from college, he worked for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune while pursuing graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. After that, he was employed as an editor at Random House before relocating to France, where he served as The Paris Review’s Paris editor from 1964 to 1966. He subsequently went back to New York, where he worked as an editor for The New York Times Sunday Book Review and contributed book reviews every day. The Times’ editors did not share his views on the Vietnam War, and as a result, a number of his reviews and pieces were turned down. He relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 to assume the role of managing editor.
Bensky was employed by the San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM for a while before coming to Berkeley to work at KPFA-FM. He prepared and served as the anchor for Pacifica Radio’s broadcast of the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 1972. Bensky worked for KPFA as the station manager from 1974 to 1977. He nearly missed going with Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate conditions at the Jonestown colony in Guyana in 1978, which led to Ryan and four journalists being shot to death on an airfield. After returning to KSAN as a news anchor, reporter, and talk show host, Bensky focused on the revolutions and US operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the early 1980s. The PBS documentary “Nicaragua: These Same Hands” was created by him in 1980.
Bensky gained notoriety for covering a wide range of domestic and international events for Pacifica Radio while serving as the station’s national affairs correspondent from 1987 to 1998. These included the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, the confirmation hearings for four Supreme Court justices, the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, and countless protests and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., among other places. In addition to co-anchoring Pacifica’s coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican conventions and the presidential debates, he served as the network’s anchor for the live broadcast of the 9/11 Commission hearings. He served as anchor for Pacifica’s in-depth reporting on the Ohio post-2004 election crisis and other congressional hearings regarding the abuse of presidential authority during the Bush administration.
He hosted Sunday Salon, a weekly two-hour radio talk show that started at Berkeley’s KPFA, until retiring. Many politicians and writers, including Paul Wellstone, Paul Krugman, Manning Marable, Bernie Sanders, Jane Smiley, Calvin Trillin, and Gary Shteyngart, were among his guests.Bensky was a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review in addition to writing for The Nation magazine. He has lived in Berkeley for a long time and worked for the East Bay Express for fifteen years as a political writer and columnist. In addition, he has guest-starred on a number of television shows, including C-SPAN, CNN, The Today Show, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and “This Week in Northern California” on KQED-TV and “Forum” on KQED-FM in San Francisco. He also served as the first managing editor from 1999 to 2000.
Bensky taught mass communication, journalism, broadcasting, and political science courses at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) in Hayward, California, for twelve years in addition to his job as a journalist. In addition, he teaches political science at CSUEB and media critique and analysis at Berkeley City College. Since the 1960s, Bensky has been involved in politics. During the Vietnam War, he worked with anti-war and nuclear disarmament organizations in New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. He also signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge in 1968, pledging to withhold taxes in opposition to the Vietnam War. He co-wrote and co-designed a number of effective direct mail campaigns for progressive modern organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.
After stepping down from regular programming in 2007, Bensky has pursued his lifelong passion of studying and writing French. He created the website “Radio Proust,” which he hosts and produces, while a fellow at the Bard College Center. Additionally, he created and teaches Proust programs at the University of California, Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Larry Bensky Net Worth
Larry has an estimated net worth of 1 million dollars.
