When Dave Bondy turned to the Mackinac Center for news and analysis, he didn’t anticipate it would lead to a new job. But it did, and he is now the Center’s digital and video content manager.

Dave was a news reporter and anchor for more than 25 years. In 2020 he sought help from the Mackinac Center as he investigated Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s overly restrictive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I respected the research and really admired how the Mackinac Center was willing to stick its neck out on issues when so many others wouldn’t,” Dave says.

Dave has journalism in his blood. As a high school student, he was a freelance reporter for the Detroit Free Press, covering high school sports. He later had an internship at CNN as part of his studies at Eastern Michigan University. After graduating from college, he entered the world of TV reporting, starting in Evansville, Indiana, before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. “I was the news guy standing on the beach reporting on hurricanes,” he says of his time there. Dave worked in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a few places in Michigan.

“My father was a pipefitter and my brother a United Auto Workers member. Both thought I was crazy to go get a college degree to work a job that paid less than what they were making,” Dave says with a chuckle. “But it paid off.”

When his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he moved back to Michigan to help. His wife Katie is a native of Frankenmuth, and they both wanted to be near family. Dave found a job at Mid-Michigan Now, a Fox-NBC conglomerate in Flint.

“In 2020, after COVID hit, I started to become skeptical of the state,” Dave says. “Michigan had really restrictive governor-imposed regulations but wasn’t releasing much data. I was digging into this, and I found that the Mackinac Center was as well.”

The early months of 2023 were the right time for him to change jobs. The Mackinac Center had an opening, and Dave was ready to leave the industry he knew. He also had a wife and two young kids and didn’t want to work the 2 p.m.-to-midnight shift anymore.

“I wanted to be somewhere where I could do something I totally believed in,” he says. “There are so many things I’ve learned here about government that blow my mind. Being able to dig deeper into matters that I care about and take time on really important issues. You just can’t do that anymore in the mainstream media.”