CFPCA alumnus, voice of Detroit retires after three-decade broadcast journalism career

When Jerome Vaughn, M.A. '99, retired on Aug. 17, 2026, he realized he could turn his phone off at night for the first time in decades. His career at WDET-FM 101.9, Detroit's public radio station and a public service of Wayne State University, spanned 34 years. In that time, Vaughn worked to show a national audience "the real Detroit," beyond the usual salacious stories of crime, violence and decay - work that earned him a place in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2018, among other honors.

Detroit's gain is partly California's fault, specifically the San Andreas Fault. On Oct. 17, 1989, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake shook the Bay Area minutes before Game 3 of the World Series. Vaughn, a recent University of Michigan graduate living in San Francisco, experienced it.

"They were saying, 'This isn't even the Big One,'" Vaughn said, a term referring to a major earthquake seismologists believe could occur along the fault line with a magnitude above 8. He was determined to miss it.

The final piece that brought Vaughn back to his hometown occurred around Thanksgiving the following year. While visiting family in Detroit, he caught an ABC Primetime Live news segment titled "Detroit's Agony."

"It was on all the crime, and how everyone and their grandmother had a gun," Vaughn said. "I remember thinking, besides the past three years I'd spent in San Francisco, I've lived here all my life. I've never been shot at, never been robbed. You wouldn't have a million people living in Detroit at the time if it were like RoboCop. People would just get up and leave."

Bob Berg, serving as press secretary to then-Mayor Coleman Young, told WXYZ-TV after it aired that it should have been called "Primetime Lies."

"It was clear the story was written before they got here," Berg told Deadline Detroit in a 2014 retrospective.

For Vaughn, that settled it.

"That was right when I was like, 'Oh, I gotta come back and do something,'" he said. "'I gotta tell some truth.'"

After moving back to his hometown, Vaughn wanted to join a newsroom. Internships were considered the only path, but he had none from his undergraduate years, and stations rarely took interns who weren't in school or recently graduated. So he decided to pursue a master's degree.

His alma mater, the University of Michigan, admitted him, but because of when he applied, he'd have to wait a year to start. Wayne State let him begin his master's in radio, TV and film within weeks. He chose Wayne State.

Two WSU professors have stayed with him. Jack Kay, a communication scholar who studied hate groups, had spent five days undercover at an Aryan World Congress, a white supremacist gathering, for his research.

"He had a whole life about him that you couldn't tell just from meeting him," Vaughn said.

The other, John Buckstaff, had run WDET as general manager from 1968-81 before teaching radio production. Buckstaff, whom Vaughn recalls was managing cancer at the time, mentored Vaughn and had him teach his undergraduate class.

Vaughn had loved radio news since age 5, when his mother bought him a Panasonic Panapet radio, known for its distinctive ball-and-chain design. So for his final paper, he chose to tell the history of Michigan Public Radio. The 90-page project took years, during which he started working at WDET and having a family.

"By the time I finished it," he said, "I think we had three kids."

He started as an intern at the station in January 1992. By April, he was working in underwriting. By November, he was in the newsroom. Don Gonyea, who was serving as interim news director that year, hired Vaughn. Gonyea went on to become NPR's national political correspondent and retired this year after four decades in broadcast journalism.

"I'm the only person he's ever hired," Vaughn said. "We always laugh about that: the one hire."

From there, Vaughn worked as a producer, reporter and editor, and became news director in 2007. He covered Detroit's bankruptcy, the death and funeral of Rosa Parks and the Kwame Kilpatrick era. He founded the Detroit Evening Report, which WDET describes as a daily newscast for and by people of color. Under his leadership, the newsroom won a national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2021, and the Michigan Association of Broadcasters named WDET its Public Radio Station of the Year in 2021, '22 and '24.

His internship opened a door that he held open for countless others. In addition to his work as a reporter and news director, Vaughn led the station's news internship program. When asked how many interns he trained at WDET, he could only estimate: "hundreds."

Nargis Rahman '10, M.A. '25, is one of them. She earned her bachelor's in journalism and master's in media arts and studies at Wayne State, and interned at WDET in 2010. She's now a reporter there, as well as a producer, weekend anchor and co-host of the Detroit Evening Report.

"Many people started as interns at WDET and later landed a job in the industry, in what is almost a nonexistent pipeline for journalists of color," Rahman said. "We are certainly indebted to mentors like [Vaughn] who pay it forward."

Many former interns have contacted him since he announced his retirement to express their gratitude.

"To see that you're having some influence on people in a positive way, that's good," he said. "Because that's not how I think about myself."

Instead, Vaughn considers himself another in a line of teachers. His mother, father, an aunt and several great-aunts were teachers. His great-grandfather, he said, escaped slavery and started the first Black high school in his hometown in Missouri.

As for his commitment to his career, Vaughn credits his wife and family. "I don't know how you can be so dedicated to something as I've been without someone having your back that way," he said.

The Vaughns have eight children, six of whom attended Wayne State. The youngest is still in high school but is "probably" a future Warrior.

Vaughn has watched the university and the city change together. As a graduate student out with friends one night, he laid down in the middle of Woodward Avenue with "no fear of getting hit by a car or anything," he said. But on a recent Friday downtown with the Detroit Tigers playing at home, "I felt like I was in Chicago."

He attributes much of that change to the university, from the graduates it sends into the city's workforce to the development of Midtown and the entrepreneurship at TechTown Detroit.

"I think Wayne State's responsible for a lot of that," Vaughn said.

Over time, he said, "the university has doubled down on Detroit. Not that they weren't interested, but I think they've really found a way to sort of reinvest and focus on the city."

While downtown Detroit and Midtown have boomed during his career, the field of journalism has shrunk. But Vaughn points to newer, innovative outlets like Outlier Media, BridgeDetroit and Planet Detroit as hope for the future of local news media, though all outlets face the same challenge: paying for the work.

"You don't do good journalism if you're starving," he said.

Still, he believes the audience will always be there. "There are always going to be curious people who want to know what's going on around them," he said.

For a journalist who has seen the worst of how his city was covered and spent 34 years setting the record straight, he remains an optimist.

"I have faith in humanity," Vaughn said. "I'm a Star Trek fan."

By Grant Wickersham