His wife, Eleanor Luedtke, confirmed his death but said she did not know the immediate cause.
As a young journalist, Mr. Luedtke developed a reputation as a swashbuckling reporter with an eye on the executive ranks. At the Detroit Free Press, then a muscular metropolitan daily, he helped direct Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the civil unrest — sparked by long-standing racial tensions — that enveloped the city in the summer of 1967.
Over five days of violence that July, an army of police and National Guardsmen blanketed the city to restore order. Mr. Luedtke went behind police lines…
