Michael Benson

Michael Benson may refer to:

Michael Benson (filmmaker)

Michael Benson (born March 31, 1962) is an American artist, writer, filmmaker, and exhibitions producer.

Career

Journalism career

After receiving a BA in English with a minor in photography at the State University of New York at Albany in 1984, Benson worked as a news assistant and occasional contributor to The New York Times, but he left the paper after two years to pursue a career as a freelance journalist. In 1986 he began a series of articles for Rolling Stone covering the opening of the Soviet underground rock music scene during the so-called glasnost (“openness”) period, which were published either with his own photographs or with images by noted rock photographer Anton Corbijn. Also in the mid-1980s he wrote an hour-long documentary for MTV on Russian rock titled “Tell Tchaikovsky the News.” During this period Benson worked occasionally as a photojournalist for the Reuters news agency’s Moscow bureau, landing front page shots in The International Herald Tribune among other publications.

Michael Benson (poet)

Michael Benson (1795 - 1871) was a 19th-century printer and poet from the Tyneside area of North East England. He was working as a printer from 1838 until his death.

Life

Very little is known of him except for a comment in Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings, with lives, portraits and autographs of the writers, and notes on the songs, revised edition Benson was a member of the “Stars of Friendship” fraternal organization. According to the book, he was known as “probably the oldest master printer in the town”. He is remembered for his address, which he entitled “The Birth of Friendship's Star” and which he read at the 1828 Christmas Day anniversary dinner. The reading was apparently generally accepted as the best address of the evening, and this included one given by a colleague and other Gateshead born poet, John Selkirk, writer of "Swalwell Hopping" and songs about Bob Cranky.

See also

References