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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Detroit anchor Hank Winchester, cleared of sexual misconduct, blasts investigation
Days after his attorneys announced he had been cleared in a criminal investigation, Detroit-based broadcast reporter Hank Winchester called the ordeal "the worst nine weeks of my life." Winchester, AGE, who serves as an anchor on NBC's WDIV-TV in Michigan, returned to his podcast "The Morning After with Kelly Stafford & Hank" to shed some light on a scandal that wracked the local news community. "I've lost both my parents. I've had testicular cancer. I've gone through a divorce," the veteran journalist said. "Nothing compares to this." The Aug. 18 podcast appearance marked his first since a local TV station reported that he was being investigated by law enforcement for sexual misconduct and that his home in Beverly Hills, California, had been searched. At a press conference on Aug. 15, Winchester's attorney, Neil Rockind, said he had been "exonerated and cleared," describing his client as "the victim of baseless and unfounded allegations." The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that same day that the Beverly Hills Police Department had presented their findings, and "it was concluded there was no cause to file any charges against Mr. Winchester." Winchester, an Emmy-winning consumer affairs reporter who has been with WDIV since 2001, spoke candidly about what he called "an emotionally exhausting process." More: Tom Llamas steps up to 'NBC Nightly News' anchor with 'a lot of Cuban coffee' He also talked philosophically about what he has learned from the more than two months he spent mostly at home as the investigation proceeded. "It's an opportunity for me to take a step back and say, like, OK, this happened. What's the lesson? What can be learned? How can it make life better?" he said. "As much as it was insane and horrific and devastating, I have to lean into that, and that's what I'm doing." For her part, Winchester's co-host, Stafford, discussed how angry she has felt about the way he was "painted in the past nine weeks," which she saw as "the complete opposite man you are." "This is where the media has got to do a better job," she said, telling the media to "get on your computers and report the new news.' Despite his negative feelings about the investigation, Winchester said he had "the utmost respect" for police and prosecutors. "I will let you know that there was an allegation that was made against me by someone and police have a responsibility in these situations to investigate allegations," the anchorman said. "But they should also take the time to investigate the person making the allegation." Fired ABC anchor Terry Moran, axed for slamming Trump, reveals next move Calling the ordeal a "dark chapter of my life," he added that the past nine weeks had changed his perspective. "What is important to me today is much different than what was important to me before this started," he said. Winchester, who was placed on leave from WDIV in June, did not address the status of his future at the Detroit NBC affiliate. In a message to the Free Press, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, sent Friday, Aug. 15, via email, WDIV vice president and general manager Bob Ellis stated the station has reached out to Winchester to discuss next steps.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A new Iron Chef Detroit has been crowned
After a successful first event in 2024, the Iron Chef event returned on Thursday, June 12, to Shed 5 at Detroit's Eastern Market. In the style of popular national and international 'Iron Chef' chef cooking shows, two of Detroit's well-known and finest chefs battled to create a trio of dishes for a panel of judges. (Full disclosure, I was a judge.) For this culinary showdown, Anthony Lombardo, chef/owner of SheWolf Pastificio & Bar in Midtown and the winner of last year's inaugural event, battled against Andy Hollyday, executive chef and partner of Selden Standard, also nearby in Midtown. The competition was intense as the two chefs worked quickly and feverishly to create each course. In the end, and by a slim margin, chef Hollyday bested defending champ Lombardo. While the chefs competed, the event was hosted by WDIV-TV's Tati Amare and Kim DeGuilio, along with Carlos Parisi, a Detroit food influencer. Parisi is also the owner and founder of Aunt Nee's, whose products include Detroit-made tortilla chips, salsa and guacamole sold at Eastern Market and several metro Detroit stores. He also founded Detroit's Sandwich Week, which takes place at attended the culinary showdown, which raises funds for Cass Community Social Services, whose mission is to support Detroiters in need through various programs. The organization's programs include food distribution, affordable housing initiatives, health care services, and job training programs. As part of the event before and during the competition, more than a dozen local restaurants provided samples of their signature dishes as guests strolled Shed 5. Restaurants providing sampling included Basan, Café Cortina, Cornman Farms, The Sprout House, Slows Bar BQ and Supino Pizzeria. The chefs showcased their skills in a friendly, timed competition and 'live broadcast' where each chef and their teams had to create an appetizer, main entrée and dessert dish. A limited pantry of ingredients was provided, but each chef also had to include a special ingredient – Better Made potato chips – and incorporate it into each course. The chefs worked quickly and deftly chopping vegetables, prepping ingredients and plating their creations. For the appetizer and dessert course, the chefs had 20 minutes to create and plate a dish for judges and 30 minutes for the main course. It was Hollyday's entrée and dessert dishes that cemented his win. For the entrée, Hollyday and team created a fresh-tasting and well-balanced dish featuring breaded shrimp. Potato chips were incorporated into the lightly coated breading on the shrimp. Hollyday plated the shrimp in a pool of fresh shucked, well-seasoned creamy corn with hints of lime and garnished with cilantro. Lombardo's entrée featured pounded-thin pork cutlets breaded in a mix of panko and potato chips and topped with crisp-tender broccoli and served with a potato chip sauce. For the dessert round, Hollyday's crepe dish beat out Lombardo's rice pudding dish. Hollyday's crepe featured a trio of fresh berries and a filling of goat cheese and powdered sugar with crunchy potato chips. Defending champion Lombardo bested Hollyday in the appetizer round with a dish of grilled peaches topped with crunchy Better Made red hot barbecue chips and drizzled with a sweet sauce with added heat from tiny bits of Thai chile peppers. For his win, Hollyday's name was added to the Detroit Iron Chef trophy. Contact Detroit Free Press food and restaurant writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news and tips to: sselasky@ Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Iron Chef Detroit II: Chefs from SheWolf, Selden Standard compete
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Detroit's WDIV meteorologist Kim Adams reveals she's dealing with 'serious health issues'
WDIV-TV meteorologist Kim Adams has revealed she is dealing with "serious health issues" in a statement that she shared on social media and the Local 4 News website. "In recent months, I have been dealing with some serious health issues that have caused me to seek care at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio," wrote Adams. "Because of my ongoing condition, I have had to be off the air for periods of time." Adams went on to indicate she went public with her health issues to thank viewers for "the outpouring of support" and concern. Although she didn't go into any specifics on her condition, she said she would do her best to provide updates. Adams, an Emmy-winning TV journalist, became the first woman to be an on-air meteorologist in Detroit TV news in 1997. After leaving WDIV in 2009, she returned to what is now called the 4WarnWeather team in 2022. The veteran meteorologist is a breast cancer survivor who works closely with New Day Foundation for Families to help cancer patients with their financial needs. Mike Campbell: WWJ-AM all-news radio reporter dies In 2017, before she rejoined WDIV, she shared her story with the station about being a single mother of five who had moved her family back to Detroit and was running Kim Adams Productions when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. After initially being told by that she was fine, she followed her instincts and persistently sought more opinions. The Oakland University alum got her master's degree in broadcasting and film from Wayne State University and studied thermodynamics and dynamics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School in Washington, D.C., and synoptic meteorology at Ohio State University, according to her WDIV biography. She previously was an intern as WJR-AM and also worked in broadcast news in Zanesville and Columbus, Ohio and Detroit's WXYZ-TV. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kim Adams, WDIV-TV meteorologist, deals with 'serious health issues'
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Lauren Kostiuk joins reporting team at Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV-TV
A former high school journalism all-star has joined her hometown TV newsroom. Lauren Kostiuk is the latest addition to the reporting team at Local 4 News (WDIV-TV). The alum of Shelby Township's Eisenhower High School and Columbia College Chicago has been with the station since April. A journalism class at Eisenhower High sparked Kostiuk's interest in a media career. She became editor-in-chief of her school newspaper and was named Michigan High School Journalist of the Year in 2014. The five-time local news Emmy nominee was an NBC News intern in college. She worked at a station in Champaign, Illinois, and the Indianapolis NBC affiliate before coming home to metro Detroit. Her roots in the region go back several generations. Lauren Kostiuk is a new member of the news team at WDIV-TV, Local 4 News in Detroit. As she wrote on WDIV's her Ukrainian grandparents came to Hamtramck as children — and her grandfather Mike Kostiuk, played for the Detroit Lions in the 1940s. Kostiuk posted on Facebook about her new job at Local 4 News: 'I grew up watching this station. It's where I first saw the power of local news and the impact of storytelling rooted in passion and integrity. Now, I get to be a part of that legacy!' Writing on X in March, she tweeted that she had accepted her 'dream reporter position.' Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit's WDIV-TV hires Lauren Kostiuk to join news team
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I'm mystified by the blind allegiance of Trump supporters
We're a month into Trump 2.0, and I find myself still transfixed by a hallmark of Trump 1.0: You have to marvel at the way his supporters are so all in for him. I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be all in. It's been a fixture in our vernacular for the last decade or so. People have been all in for all kinds of things — their faith, a new TV series, pants from Lululemon, their favorite cocktail. Recently, it was the slogan for my colleagues and me at WDIV-TV for our Lions coverage. (I am still all in, by the way.) Is anybody all in for you? Does anyone in your life find you perfect in every way? If so, don't be so sure that it's a blessing. Someone needs to love you enough to tell you those shoes are hideous, or that you might want to rethink that tattoo idea. "All in" feels like a fairly new phrase, but as a concept it goes way back. In 1816, it was Commodore Stephen Decatur who was said to have raised a glass in an after-dinner toast and avowed, "Our country – in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.' I was always baffled by the blind allegiance to anything or anyone in the wrong. And it seems now that we have arrived at a perfect Decaturian moment. More: Devin Scillian, longtime anchor on WDIV-TV in Detroit, to retire I honestly have no idea who would win the title of 'Favorite President of My Lifetime,' but I'm fairly certain I agreed with that person no more than 75% of the time. (If you loved Ronald Reagan, Iran-Contra was wrong, wrong, wrong. If you loved Barack Obama, the fact that no one was ever held responsible for the subprime lending disaster was wrong, wrong, wrong. I can do this all day.) And I would argue that disappointments and remonstrations from those who love you are vital, and far more helpful than sycophantic attaboys from a Greek chorus that has lost its ability to think or speak critically. It's been difficult to keep pace with what Steve Bannon refers to as 'muzzle velocity' ― the rapid-fire pace at which Bannon said the Trump Administration should issue directives ― but setting aside the torching of our relationship with Canada and suggesting the Gaza crisis can be solved by a real estate deal, there are several Trump maneuvers that I find indefensible. And just as indefensible is the silence from the president's dugout. (Republicans in the U.S. Congress seem to have decided that being a "rubber stamp" is too exhausting; they're now opting for the much less taxing 'doormat.") There is no legitimate defense for pardoning the nearly 1,600 seditionists who defaced our very democracy. This included physically defacing our sacred Capitol, and assaulting the decent men and women assigned its caretaking. Nearly 250 years of peaceful transfers of power came to a halt in a shocking burst of anarchic violence and rhetoric, and our Vice President and Speaker of the House had very real reasons to wonder whether they would survive it. Trump pardoned all of the Jan. 6 seditionists, even those who've come to regret and express shame for their behavior, with a blanket made of nonsense and dereliction. (As a bonus, some of these defendants are arguing that the pardon amounts to a multi-use get-out-of-jail free card that extends to a murder plot and child pornography charges. Nice folks.) I have no patience for the argument that they were 'denied due process'; due process is the basis of appeal for just about everyone in America's vast prison complex. It was also easily one of the most video-recorded crimes in history. U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and President Donald Trump himself once avowed that the most violent offenders must be held responsible. Now, thanks to muzzle velocity, we don't even hold those two responsible for their own words. AG Dana Nessel: I'm suing Trump because of a promise I made to Michigan voters I've also been grinding off a molar over the launch of the Donald Trump meme coin cryptocurrency. It's a clear money grab, a way of not only making money off the presidency but, in the thinking of some of us, profiteering from the Ponzi scheme that continues to define crypto. (Fortune estimates that while thousands of investors lost $2 billion dollars in the rollout, the Trump family raked in $100 million in transaction fees.) Even worse, thanks to crypto's invisibility cloak, there is no way to know who is pouring Russian rubles and Chinese yuan into the Trump coffers. In 2021, Trump said Bitcoin 'seems like a scam.' I guess things change when the scam works in your favor. On this matter, I suppose the lack of criticism from the right is hardly surprising. Go back to 2016, and think about how Trump's supporters weren't particularly bothered by him becoming the first modern president who refused to place his business interests in a blind trust. (That rancid, rotting carcass in the road, by the way, is the good old Emoluments Clause. It's a quaint little section of the Constitution that prevents presidents from profiting from the office. Remember that? Show of hands? Anyone?) The Trump coin is, clearly and indefensibly, a way of picking up the presidency by the ankles and shaking the nickels out of its pockets. But only those who've lost money seem all that aggrieved. During my four decades as a journalist, I continually reminded people that I was not in the opinion business. Rather, I was in the truth and transparency business. That remains true. I don't see either of these frustrations as being based in politics. I see them as clearly based in, wait for it, the Constitution. And while Donald Trump does not care one whit what I say (I'm a journalist) or what Democrats say (they're politically motivated) or what anti-Trump Republicans say (ditto), he does care what his most ardent supporters think. And that's why they, like a good parent or a good friend, need to call out bad behavior and nonsense when they see it. It would also go a long way toward helping those who didn't vote for Donald Trump see his supporters as critical thinkers who can see beyond the blinding dashboard. So let's consider the limits of 'all in.' I love my Detroit Lions. But I can still take issue with asking a wide receiver to throw the first pass of his career in the second half of a playoff game when you're trailing by 10. I think being truly 'all in' means I have a responsibility to speak up. And if you love Donald Trump, I think you do, too. Devin Scillian is a recently retired Detroit television news anchor who appeared on WDIV-TV (Channel 4) broadcasts for nearly 30 years. Submit a letter to the editor at and we may publish it online and in print. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump supporters, it's OK to admit your guy isn't perfect | Opinion
