Larry Kahaner

Larry Kahaner is an American journalist, author, ghostwriter and former licensed private investigator. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Early life and education
Kahaner holds a Master of Science in journalism from Boston University.

Career
As a reporter for the Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer in 1980, Kahaner wrote the first in-depth exposé of the textile mills in the city and how they caused byssinosis, also known as 'brown lung disease,' in workers. For years, workers were reluctant to complain about the illness for fear of losing their jobs. The mills exerted great economic power including owing an adjoining town, Bibb City, owned by Bibb Manufacturing Company. When the series was released, many of the newspaper's street boxes were looted of their copies. The series led to the Georgia legislature enacting laws to allow workers with byssinosis to file workers' compensation claims for the first time. The reportage also garnered several awards including an Associated Press Newswriting Award – Public Service.

During the early to mid 1980s, Kahaner covered the telecommunications industry as it underwent a massive change from a regulated business, dominated by AT&T, to a deregulated industry that brought in new players and new technologies. As a founding editor of Communications Daily and later as a Washington correspondent for Business Week, in addition to freelancing for other magazines and newspapers, he wrote some of the earliest articles about the new telecommunications landscape, cell phones,   email, and the internet, culminating in two books, "The Phone Book," with co-author Alan Green (Penguin, 1983) and "On the Line: The Men of MCI – Who Took on AT&T, Risked Everything and Won" (Warner Books, 1986).

Since the 1990s, Kahaner has been a regular contributor to Fleet Owner, a transportation and logistics print magazine and online publication. First, he wrote a monthly column about Washington politics, as well as other stories, and later in 2015 began writing a twice-a-month article about the lives of truck drivers. He has called attention to their day-to-day struggles, health, safety, working conditions public perceptions and personal lives.

Partly drawing on his experience after college as a technician on an oceanographic vessel that surveyed Massachusetts Bay (The RV Atlantic Twin) Kahaner has authored a thriller "USA, Inc." which was published by Bay City Publishers in December, 2016. Aside from recently-published humor pieces in The Haven and Extra Newsfeed,

A former BusinessWeek Correspondent, his work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Information Week.

Awards and recognition
Kahaner has received the Jesse M. Neal National Business Journalism Award, the American Society of Business Publication Editors Regional Gold Award and an Associated Press Newswriting Award.