Larry Bensky

Larry Bensky
Larry Bensky in 2005
Born	(1937-05-01) May 1, 1937 (age 79)

Larry Bensky (born May 1, 1937) is a literary and political journalist with more than forty years experience in both print and broadcast media, as well as a teacher and long-time political activist. He is well known for his work with Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California, and for the many nationally broadcast hearings he anchored for the Pacifica network.

A native of New York City, Bensky graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1954 and, with departmental honors, from Yale University, where he was managing editor of the Yale Daily News. He is married and has one daughter.

Prior to his broadcasting career (and continuing throughout), Bensky worked as a print journalist and editor. He worked at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune after college, while attending graduate school at the University of Minnesota. He then worked as an editor at Random House, before moving to France, where he was Paris editor of The Paris Review from 1964 to 1966. He then returned to New York, as an editor of The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and also wrote daily book reviews. But his views on the war in Vietnam were not well received by editors of the Times, and several of his reviews and features were rejected. In 1968, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to take over as managing editor of the radical, anti-war publication, Ramparts magazine, working closely with editor-in-chief Robert Scheer.

After leaving Ramparts, Bensky worked for a time at San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM, before joining the staff of KPFA-FM in Berkeley. In 1972, he anchored and produced Pacifica Radio's coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, both held in Miami, along with the attendant massive anti-war protests, dubbed "The Siege of Miami".