The Bio
Expanding media's boundaries with new concepts, fresh thinking
From creating and executive producing “America’s Most Wanted” to on-scene news coverage and talk show contributor, broadcast journalist and producer Michael Linder brings fresh conceptual thinking to radio, television and the Internet. He is currently developing a new reality TV series.
At KABC in 2010-11, Linder established the first radio news bureau and studio to be built at L.A. City Hall in decades, pushing that station's goal of becoming LA's "hometown" radio station. He contributed in-depth coverage of breaking stories as a correspondent on “McIntyre in the Morning,” “The Peter Tilden Morning Show” and “The John Phillips Show.”
In five years at KNX, Linder traveled America extensively, providing in-depth coverage of Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans, Minutemen on Mexico’s border and by sat phone from the slopes of a smoldering Mount St. Helens. He has uncovered dozens of original investigative reports, documentaries and segments, and provided gavel-to-gavel broadcast and blog coverage of the Michael Jackson and Phil Spector trials.
He's the epitome of a true roving reporter, capable of covering stories far from home base. Textbook radio journalism that could be taught in any classroom.
—Journalist of the Year Citation
His investigative reports have focused on California’s water wars, Blackwater, environmental dangers and street gangs including an eyewitness account of the execution of Crips co-founder Tookie Williams.
Linder has created numerous television specials, documentaries, the California Gubernatorial Debate and the syndicated movie review series “Sneaks” in association with the Los Angeles Times while at KTLA. In 1994, he executive produced “Real News,” KCOP-TV’s nightly news.
After two years in Tokyo, producing American and Japanese radio and television from across Asia, Linder created, launched and executive produced Fox Television’s “America’s Most Wanted,” casting John Walsh as host and capturing one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives in the show’s first episode. In "Outfoxed," author Alex Ben Block credits Linder with saving the Fox network from an early demise by delivering the fledgling weblet's first hit series.
With Quincy Jones, Linder executive produced “The Jesse Jackson Show,” a weekly syndicated series that took public affairs television out of Washington studios and to the scenes of breaking events, including Iraq as coalition forces massed for war in 1990.
Talks with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad failed to coax Iraq from Kuwait, but Linder won permission from Hussein to enter and document the occupied nation, the first such coverage. The mission won the release of 227 hostages held in Baghdad and Kuwait including the staff of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait City.
In 1995-96, Linder created and produced Berserkistan, the first web site to cover a war on location — this one in Bosnia. The site received critical acclaim for its on-scene coverage, photojournalism and interactive humanitarianism. Berserkistan was featured by Wired, CNN and “ABC World News Tonight,” a daily must-read at the White House, War Crimes Tribunal, U.N., and by American and NATO troops, NGOs and Bosnian refugees worldwide.
Linder was a producer on the launches of “Entertainment Tonight” and “Eye On LA.” He has produced numerous specials, documentaries and network series including the concept for the Emmy-winning PBS series “Future Quest.”
He has been portrayed in the movie “Judgment Day: The John List Story” which chronicled his role in the capture of a multiple murderer 18 years on the run, and has been a guest on “Nightline” and “Good Morning America.”
Linder is thought to have been the first Los Angeles reporter to use Twitter for on-scene photojournalism and coverage of breaking news.
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