Les Payne

Leslie "Les" Payne (July 12, 1941 – March 19, 2018)[1][2] was an American journalist. He served as an editor and columnist at Newsday and was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. Payne received a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative research.[2]

Les Payne
Born(1941-07-12)July 12, 1941
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
DiedMarch 19, 2018(2018-03-19) (aged 76)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Connecticut
OrganizationUnited States Army,
Newsday
Notable work
National Association of Black Journalists
AwardsPulitzer Prize

Biography

Early years

Payne was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1941.[3] In 1954, Payne moved with his mother to Hartford, Connecticut, where she remarried.[3][4] According to DNA analysis, he was descended in part from people from Cameroon.[5]

The first member of his family to attend college, Payne graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1964 with a degree in English.[1][6] He was interested in pursuing a career in journalism, but as an African American he found no opportunities in the mainstream press. Instead, Payne joined the army, where he eventually became a captain. He ended his army career with two years as an information officer, writing speeches for General William Westmoreland and running the army newspaper.[6]

Career

Newsday hired Payne in 1969 as an investigative reporter.[6] In 1973, he helped write "The Heroin Trail", a series of 33 articles that detailed how heroin originated in Turkish poppy fields and found its way to the streets of New York City.[1] Newsday won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for "The Heroin Trail".[7] Next year, it was published as a book credited to the newspaper staff, The Heroin Trail (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).[1][8]

In 1975, Payne and other African Americans working in the media established the National Association of Black Journalists. Payne served as the group's fourth president.[9]

Payne co-wrote a series of articles about the Symbionese Liberation Army and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. These became the basis of his next book, The Life and Death of the SLA (Ballantine Books, 1976), credited to "Les Payne and Tim Findley, with Carolyn Craven".[6][10] Payne's reporting from South Africa during the 1976 Soweto Uprising was selected by the jury for a Pulitzer Prize in International Journalism, but the group's advisory board overruled their decision with no explanation.[4][11] Despite being barred from the country, Payne returned to South Africa in 1985 to chronicle the changes that had taken place during the intervening years.[4]

Payne started writing a weekly column for Newsday in 1980.[12] It was syndicated in 1985.[6] In 2006, Newsday's editor said the column was "so strong, so provocative and generated so much hate mail that Newsday editors got to know the names of all the Suffolk County Police Department's bomb-sniffing dogs".[9]

Payne served as Newsday's national editor and assistant managing editor for foreign and national news; at different times, he was responsible for the newspaper's coverage of health and science, New York City, and investigations.[11] He was responsible for New York Newsday, the newspaper's short-lived attempt to compete in the New York City market.[9] His staff won many journalism awards, including six Pulitzer Prizes.[11]

After retiring from Newsday in February 2006, Payne continued to contribute his column to the paper until December 2008.[12][13] In his retirement, he wrote a biography of Malcolm X, which will be published in 2020 as The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. The book is framed by essays from Tamara Payne, Payne’s daughter and primary researcher, who completed the biography after her father’s death.

gollark: I think basically all the conveniently expressible "maximize X" things break horribly if actually taken seriously, and I also don't want people to just "have their own personal prescriptions about what is a good quality in the world", since it might severely disagree with mine.
gollark: BRB, maximizing paperclips.
gollark: This is at least... internally consistent and whatever, I think, it's just rather horrifying and not something I want to be judged by or anyone to be judged by.
gollark: Oh, and if for some reason you're an *incredibly* self-confident person who thinks all acts they do are right, you'll turn out maximally non-evil.
gollark: Being vaguely aware of that sort of thing, and also that I live in a relatively comfortable position in what is among the richest societies ever, I feel bad about *not* doing more things, which would cause me to be more evil than someone who just ignores this issue forever, which is not, according to arbitrary moral intuitions I have™, something which an evilness measuring thing should say.

See also

References
  1. "Les Payne". The HistoryMakers. April 10, 2006. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  2. Jones, Bart (March 20, 2018). "Les Payne, former Newsday editor who won Pulitzer Prize, dies". Newsday. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  3. Roberts, Sam (March 20, 2018). "Les Payne, Journalist Who Exposed Racial Injustice, Dies at 76". The New York Times. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
  4. "Honorary Degree Recipients, May 4 and 5, 2011". Old Dominion University. Archived from the original on May 14, 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  5. "Know Your Heritage" (video). The Africa Channel. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  6. Quinn, Gwendolyn. "AAPRC Weekly: Les Payne". African-American Public Relations Collective. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  7. "1974 Winners". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  8. "The Heroin trail". Library of Congress Catalog Record (LCC). Retrieved October 26, 2013.
  9. Prince, Richard (January 22, 2009). "Pulling No Punches: A Salute to Les Payne". The Defenders Online. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  10. "The life and death of the SLA". LCC record. Retrieved October 26, 2013.
  11. Eisner, Peter (January 12, 2009). "Les Payne's Too Quiet Departure". The Nation. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  12. Prince, Richard (December 31, 2008). "Newsday Drops Les Payne". Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Archived from the original on May 10, 2012. Retrieved May 3, 2012.
  13. "Payne Leaving 'Newsday' But Continuing Syndicated Column". Editor & Publisher. February 2, 2006. Retrieved May 3, 2012.

Further reading
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