Father and Daughter   

Mike Wendland--the Mr. Tech of Detroit--takes his computer know-how to the Detroit Free Press.

Mike Wendland--the Mr. Tech of Detroit--takes his computer know-how to the Detroit Free Press. Wendland has been broadcasting his PC and Internet advice since the mid-'90s on TV and later radio, and he's keeping his techie-talk gigs with two Detroit CBS-owned radio stations and NBC Newschannel, which distributes his weekly segments on multimedia to all of the network's affiliates. For the Free Press, Wendland says he'll write at least a weekly column that highlights "narrative profiles, with a strong voice, about technology and the people whose lives are being impacted by it for good and for bad." There'll be "no geek-speak," he promises. The 54-year-old, also the author of five books on the Internet, headed up the investigative team at WDIV-TV in Detroit from 1980 to '98 and wrote for the Detroit News for the previous decade. The really great benefit to joining the Free Press, he says, is that his daughter, Wendy Wendland-Bowyer, works there as well. "I'm delighted to be able to see her that much more often," he says. Wendland-Bowyer, 33, a reporter on the city desk, says she's happy to share her workplace with her father. "My dad and I are very close," she says. But there's close and then there's close. Wendland-Bowyer figured her dad would get an office somewhere upstairs. Instead, "They put him in an office...right by my desk.... That's bizarre."