THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REPORTER MICHAEL WINES

In his own words, he, like so many other journalists, entered the field to “change things for the better.” And in 2005, Michael Wines had in his view the perfect opportunity to do just that. Working on location in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi in central Africa, he became intimately familiar with the inhumane and dangerous conditions that prisoners in Maula Prison suffered. 

Located slightly outside of the city, the prison’s spatial constraints crammed inmates practically on top of each other, and approximately 200 people had to sleep on concrete flooring every night without breathing room. The story, which focused on a “garage-sized cellblock,” was inspired by the experience of one man. Incarcerated in these conditions for six years, he had never defended his case in court. Because of ongoing clerical errors by prison officials, he had been ignored through his tenure in the prison. Unfortunately, his story was not unique there.

Disturbed by this injustice, Wines leapt at the chance to use his platform as a writer for The New York Times to investigate and expose these systemic failures. And even though the massive attention brought on by the globally syndicated story at first indicated things would get better for prisoners, the solution to the overarching problem would not come as easily. 

Still, Michael Wines used his tools as a journalist to shine a light on structural disenfranchisement.

A Career That Started in Kindergarten 

For such an accomplished writer, Michael Wines has some mixed feelings about his life’s calling. “I was predestined to be a journalist,” he told us in 2015, “which has been both a blessing and a curse.”  As he maintained this motivation from an early age, he knew he would go on to have a career in news writing, so much so that at the age of five, he created his own newspaper. 

In his home neighborhood of Shively in Louisville, Kentucky, he created an editorial “with an ancient Underwood, typing paper and carbon sheets.” He would then sell his one-page newspapers to neighbors for one penny. Once he began his formal education, he founded another paper; this time, for his elementary school. Continuing the trajectory that defined his youth, his next step was to become the editor of his high school paper at Pleasure Ridge Park High School. And to the surprise of no one, Wines graduated again to being a writer and eventual editor for the University of Kentucky’s student newspaper.

These formative experiences helped him to gain the tools necessary for a career in journalism. After he graduated with his B.A. in Journalism from UK in 1973, he continued his education at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and completed his degree a year later.

Keeping a Kentucky Eye on the World News

With top-tier degrees in journalism in hand, he would return to Kentucky to take on a reporting role at the Lexington Herald-Leader before quickly moving back to Louisville to join, as he told us, “the late and much-lamented Louisville Times.” It was at this newspaper between 1974 and 1981 that he would gain a lifelong appreciation for the newspapers operating out of the Commonwealth and Louisville, specifically.

“People don’t realize what terrific newspapers this city had. These were among the best newspapers in the country. They were regularly put on par with big papers like the New York Times and LA Times. A lot of the reporters who eventually wound up at the Washington Post and the New York Times and made names for themselves….All of these people got their start in Louisville. I suspect that most of them would tell you that the experience and the inculcation of what it means to be a journalist that they got working here was really valuable for what they went on to do.”

Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere

At the Louisville Times, he would also meet the future Pulitzer Prize-winner Sharon LaFraniere, who he would eventually marry.

After moving onto the National Journal in the mid-1980s, he took his career to the next level working as a correspondent at the Washington bureau for the Los Angeles Times. Here, he would break a monumentally important political scandal that clouded Ronald Reagan’s administration: the Iran-Contra affair. Wines in this capacity was instrumental in reporting diligently and clearly this complex scandal that featured many moving parts and players.

For his active role in the investigation and reporting of this scandal, he was offered a job at The New York Times, where he would cover “the Justice Department, the American intelligence community, the White House, the 1992 presidential campaign, Congress, the environment and, for nearly 15 years, news and life in Russia and surrounding states, southern Africa and China.”

The immersion into foreign, often economically depressed cultures has created for Wines a more nuanced view of the United States. “It would benefit all of us I think,” he said, “to put all of our blessings and deficits into a little bit of perspective and ask what we can do to make life better for that great share of the Earth’s population that doesn’t live as well as we do.”

A Reporter’s Call to Duty Never Quiets

If you’ve learned anything about Michael Wines from this story, it’s that his lifelong passion for reporting will, indeed, last for his entire life. He’ll be turning 70 this year and as we write this in January of 2021, Wines has contributed more new stories for The New York Times in the past year than we can even count. Covering historical events like America’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the contested and contentious 2020 presidential election, the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests across the country, and the riotous breach of our nation’s Capitol by supporters of ousted President Donald Trump, Michael Wines shows no sign of taking his eye off the world. 

To see our full program featuring Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere’s return to Kentucky in 2015, click here. 

To see more profiles of Kentucky’s voices in the news, check out our blog or full program featuring Perry Bacon Jr. and stay tuned for our upcoming digital program featuring Kentucky native, New York Times reporter, author, publisher, Pulitzer Prize winner and administrator Dana Canedy in conversation with former editor of The Courier Journal, Rick Green.